


Misstep

by KittySmith



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Asexual Jack Frost, Asexual Pitch Black, Asexual Relationship, Bigger Badder Problems, Counter-Guardians Group, F/M, Gen, Jack Frost and Pitch Black as Allies, Jack Frost/Pitch Black Feels, Jack being Jack, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Mythology References, Other, Pitch Black Has Feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 15:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3214370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittySmith/pseuds/KittySmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch caught on a bit quicker to what Jack really wants, and gained the spirit's loyalty, but his pretense of being a family is becoming less of a pretense the longer it drags on. Will their haphazard connection survive the threats that rise to meet them? Or was the whole thing just a misstep?</p><p>(Known elsewhere((ff.net)) as "Cold and Dark")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Decisions

    "...To want a family," Pitch entreated, brow furrowed and hand extended, palm-side up. Jack's traitorous heart leaped at the word and he forced himself to look away, but not before Pitch noticed the pique in interest. Scrapping his other plans entirely, Pitch pushed forward, clutching Jack's shoulder and stooping to look the youthful immortal in the eye, "We could be family, Jack. Who else would understand you like I do? What goes better…" He moved his hand to Jack's cheek, hoping to play off the boy's obvious keening need for affection, "Than cold and dark?" Pitch was more pleased than he expected when Jack leaned surreptitiously into the touch, wondering if he wasn't a little touch-starved himself these past millennia.

    Jack searched the yellow-gold eyes before him, looking for the deceit. He could tell where Pitch was going with this, and the way he was placing those affectionate touches was clearly premeditated. Yet, although he knew much of it was deception, the idea niggled at him; in fact, on paper, it sounded great. A family, someone to understand what it was like to be alone and not believed in, a partner in the storm. There was a time Jack would've jumped at the chance. Finding himself leaning into the touch, Jack broke away, stepping back to breathe air not tainted with dark and flooded with Pitch's scent.

    That time had passed. Jack was more cautious now. "I don't really want to drown the world in fear, and that's a little speed bump for this 'family' thing, isn't it?"

    "Oh, politics, Jack," Pitch waved off his concerns dismissively, and though Jack's stubbornness did worry him slightly, how hard could the boy be to sway? Especially once they were _family._ "You see families of all sorts of individual leanings, don't you? Family doesn't break up over something as silly as that. Think on it; I can't be everywhere at once, you know, spreading fear and causing nightmares. And too much fear," Pitch exhaled sharply, almost a huff, and shook his head, bridging the gap between the two of them both physically and verbally, "Well, they break. They're no longer afraid. Or, rather, they're no longer anything outside those fragile little heads of theirs. You can provide the levity, the fun in the day, and help them keep hope. I need you to keep them from breaking, Jack. Not to go out and- and rough them up."

    Jack crossed his arms over his chest, unconsciously making a barrier between them, as by this point Pitch was near looming over the younger sprite, "Uh-huh. And somehow that'll make them believe in me? Your whole plan to get followers is based on fear."

    "Oh, I could mention my _arch-nemesis,_ Jack Frost, whenever I make my exit at dawn. In fact," Pitch was sort of getting into the fabricating of this plan, now. It almost sounded… Fun. "We could even put about that you had no power in the night, nor I in the day, so we could be seen together without arousing suspicion." His previous plan to lure and subjugate the boy was getting further from the forefront of his mind, and Pitch closed his eyes tightly once to center himself, snapping out of the enthusiasm of the game. He could see Jack's defenses faltering in the softness of his face and Pitch rested his hands gently on Jack's crossed arms, "Or we could do otherwise. Jack, together, the possibilities are _endless_."

    A flurry of snow, natural for once, blew between them and subsided in an instant, their clothes and expressions settling calmly in its passing. "And we'd be family?" The slow, careful question had something dangerously real fill Pitch's chest like storm clouds. Whether the lightening reached golden eyes or Jack heard the thunder, somewhere in Pitch's silence he found an answer and nodded, resolutely, allowing his arms to fall by his sides as Pitch's questing hands slid possessively up to his shoulders. He graced Pitch with a lopsided smile etched with regret, "It's the Guardians' turn to not be believed in."


	2. A Familiar Series of Events

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pitch mentions Fearlings. Fearlings are not what those who have read the books think they are. Pitch is just unoriginal with naming things.

    "So…" Jack hung upside down, eyeing Pitch questioningly as the shadow man perused yet another volume of his near endless library beneath the surface. "When do we rub our hands together and cackle evilly?"

    Pitch threw him a look, somewhere between amusement and admonishment, "I assume you are itching to make a more definite plan?"

    Dropping lightly to the stony ground, Jack leaned bodily on the taller man's shoulder and waved one hand mockingly, his voice full of false enthusiasm, "No, I just _love_ doing nothing but watch you read dialects I can't possibly understand." He gestured pointedly at the book.

    "I won't deny you," Pitch continued reading with a smirk, waiting for the winter sprite to snap. He lasted longer than Pitch expected. The elder spirit actually finished the sentence he was on.

    "Pitch, come _on_ …" When Pitch's only response was to widen the smirk to an almost good-natured grin at Jack's impatience, a sudden, unnatural flurry of wind tore the book from his hands and sent it skittering, page over cover, down the aisle of towering bookshelves. One raised hairless brow met sideways mischievous grin.

    "That was important," Pitch started calmly, his teeth slowly peeking out in forewarning from behind parting lips.

    "So am I," Jack returned, perching on his staff in a way that clearly defied gravity to master him, "In fact I- Whoa!" Whatever Jack may have been saying was lost as a Nightmare reared out of the omnipresent gloom of the subterranean labyrinth Pitch called home and whinnied fiercely in his face. Although Jack had slid halfway down his staff in surprise, he could still clearly see Pitch's teeth shining playfully in the darkness. Well, playful like an orca with a baby seal. There was still a hint of anticipation in the Nightmare King's tense shoulders. How Jack responded to the bit of revenge Pitch had gotten would clearly set the tone for how they continued their partnership.

     _Well,_ Jack thought, rolling his shoulders with a stifled laugh, _if that's the way he wants to play it._ With a burst of wind, Jack twirled up his staff and threw a harmless snowball in the surprised Nightmare's face, sailing over it to his real goal. The number of teeth Pitch had on display grew momentarily, and just before Jack was sure he'd nail him with the icy blast he'd gathered, like a Cheshire cat, Pitch was gone. Frost skittered harmlessly across the floor.

    "Have you ever wondered," Pitch purred, his voice coming from all directions as Jack turned and turned again to try and catch sight of the shadow, "if there was a way to catch a shadow?" _Lame line, Pitch,_ Jack rolled his eyes.

    For a long moment, there was silence but for the Nightmare's antsy whinnies and snuffling breath. But then, Jack's face transformed with a grin as he worked out a solution, diving down the aisle before Pitch could work out what he was doing- what he was heading for. Shadows leaped at him and the Nightmare jumped into action as Pitch realized, too late, what was going on. With a somersaulting grab, he clutched his prize protectively to his chest just as Pitch's own hand reached out of the long-cast shadows of the shelves. Although he did crash, rather uncomfortably, into the only stone wall visible this side of the library, the heady triumph masked any potential pain from his collision as he rose, holding the book over his head in a cocky gesture, "It might be possible with this."

    The Nightmare rolled its eyes back warily, not approaching and the fleeting thought passed that the book Jack was holding had more than sentimental value to the Boogeyman, but Pitch materialized just as the idea reached a fragile point of crystallization and the slow clapping broke it. "Good show, Jack," Pitch's voice, once more issuing from one point alone, swept the rest of the fragments away and Pitch smiled, the annoyance at being bested, or perhaps at having his game cut short, only showing in the renewed tension gathered at the edges of his steady, golden eyes. His voice lowered dangerously, "I concede."

    "Oh, don't do that," Jack's arm lowered without his intent behind it, the fun of the game diminishing at Pitch's attitude toward defeat. "Don't be a sore loser; it was just fun, come on. You know, 'ha, ha, you got me?'" When the Boogeyman seemed as uncomprehending as before, Jack moved forward decisively, holding out the ancient tome- until Jack held it in his hands, he hadn't realized how old and worn the real leather bindings were- and looking meaningfully from Pitch to the book with serious blue eyes. "Take it." The shadows receded from where Jack was standing as Pitch's tense posture melted into something like trepidation. Jack moved another step forward and pushed the book into Pitch's chest, ignoring the way his fingers lingered on the book a little after the elder man's arms folded instinctively around it. It was with a foreign twinge of regret that he lost contact with the tome, but he shook his head and refocused on the here-and-now. "We're partners, now, Pitch. Remember? Family?"

    "I haven't been part of a family for a long time."

    The words surprised them both.

    "I never have," Jack replied quickly, sweeping away the beginnings of an awkward silence. Pitch must have spent all his time down here with his books after the Guardians had defeated him. Reading and biding his time, without seeing actual people interacting, it was no wonder he acted so oddly to Jack. A whim passed the sprite and he grabbed it, grinning, "We could go do some field research."

    A shadow passed over the two of them, bigger than the Nightmares, bigger than five Nightmares, and Pitch's face relaxed, strength welling up from some unknown influence as Jack kept his gaze fixed to Pitch's. Whatever relaxed a Nightmare King was not something he wanted to see right now, and he was waiting on an answer. "Whatever could you have in mind?"

    

    "This is the absolute epitome of boring, Jack," Pitch complained monotonously, lounging sideways on a thin, bare tree branch outside the Bartlett family's kitchen window. "I understand you have some _fascination_ with this town's inhabitants for reasons unknown to the rest of the world but-"

    "Shush," Jack hushed him, sternly but without looking from the window, "This is the best part."

    Jamie, a brown-haired kid just up to Jack's waist when the sprite deigned to touch the ground, had gotten up from the table, more than ready to go upstairs and sleep. Hopefully, with sweeter dreams than he'd been getting lately. It was somehow scary, how the myths he'd seen and the things his parents had always told him were real had disappeared. But… Maybe, tonight, they would visit him again and tell him the truth…

    His spirits brightened further as his mother approached, and then dropped softly to her knees to meet his identical chocolate brown eyes with her own. She smoothed his hair, wordlessly and smiling, and pecked him once on the forehead, murmuring, "I love you tonight and I'll love you tomorrow. Good night, sweetie." Jamie beamed and repeated the saying, his sister chiming in half a repetition before the desire to climb up one of the dining chairs distracted her.

    "Idyllic," Pitch enunciated precisely, but his attempt at nonchalance sounded more the opposite and he glanced down when Jack smiled backwards at him. "Are we to give each other doting nicknames, then?"

    That hadn't been the point and Pitch knew it, so Jack leaned further backwards and whispered with an evil glee, "Sweetie pie."

    Pitch shuddered, "No."

    "Snookums."

    "Doubly no."

    "Dear heart."

    "I've got one?"

    "…Honey bunch."

    Pitch looked at him incredulously, "That's used to describe a person?" Jack shrugged and turned back to the window, where Jamie had distracted his mother with some story or another he simply had to tell her before he slept, neither noticing how Sophie, the younger sister, had rounded the table by stepping from chair to chair, until she reached the one nearest the stove.

    The pot was still hot enough to burn, Jack felt, as she reached for it, and his eyes widened as he tried to think of some way to stop her. Just as he'd reached for his staff to freeze the damn thing solid, something dark and insubstantial hopped through the window, landing on the messy blonde's tiny shoulder. It was as if the shifting shadows that followed Pitch had been compressed, forcibly contained in the vague resemblance of a frog, with the same glowing golden eyes that Pitch and his Nightmares shared. As soon as it touched the girl, she gasped, fingers recoiling before they could grasp hot metal and she jumped down from the chair and ran to her mother. With no little awe, Jack turned back just in time to see Pitch pull back his outstretched hand. The Nightmare King had, at some point, stood up on his branch in alarm, and now he towered indecisively over Jack, still looking through the window.

    "What was _that?_ " Jack threw a pointing finger towards the window in case Pitch missed his meaning.

    "A Fearling." Pitch finally looked down at Jack, who was still staring incredulously, and elaborated, "A part of me."

    "That was- that was-" Jack held his fingers to his temples, leaning back in the air as he tried to take it all in and produce the correct words for the situation. When he did, his arms exploded outwards and he leaned in toward Pitch, "Awesome!" Ignoring the way his fellow spirit twitched at the invasion of his personal bubble, Jack grabbed both of his shoulders, "You totally just saved that girl! Why didn't you tell me you could do stuff like that?" Jack's excitement lit his blue eyes up like ice hit by the sun, and he did not release his hold on Pitch's upper arms.

    Pitch allowed the contact. Not because it reminded him of a time when someone was proud of him. Nor because it was somehow reawakening the storm of old emotions he'd thought he'd gained a hold on the last time he used them to lure Jack to his side. No, Pitch allowed the hold only because he needed to keep Jack happy so he wouldn't run off and rally the Guardians. Any hope those weirdos had was another percentage point on the wrong side of the equation for Pitch's continued comfort. "I didn't really save her, Jack."

    "Totally did. But, Pitch…" Here Jack lost his gusto and let his arms fall to his side, careful not to hit Pitch accidentally with his staff, "I always thought fear couldn't… Um…"

    "Couldn't do anything worthwhile?" Pitch guessed darkly, stepping around to the bottom of the tiny branch with no regard for gravity whatsoever.

    "No," Jack protested, and then, continued in chagrin, "I didn't think it could help someone."

    "Fear is essential, Jack," the Boogeyman began, and even though Jack was slightly interested now, the didactic, lecturing pace of his starting sentence gave Jack _fear_ in a way Pitch neither intended nor noticed, "It teaches you what is dangerous and how to face the monsters of the real world. Bad dreams are like…" Pitch waved his hand in a vague sideways gesture, beginning to walk up the side of the tree as he explained, "A test run. A way to experience fear and bad situations without any true danger to the child. I teach them caution," Pitch paused and pinned Jack with the sudden intensity of the golden stare directed at him, "To survive." Honestly, Jack hadn't really thought about that side of fear, but he supposed it existed for a reason. Well, actually, Jack didn't really spend a lot of time deep in thought about anything at all. There was always somewhere that needed a little frost and usually the faster he moved, the closer he came to leaving his own troubles behind him.

    A moment passed before Pitch looked away again, now into the second floor window of Jamie's room and his tone changed to a heavy sort of pleasant surprise, "Oh, look. You've stumbled us onto one of the last few believers."

    Glad to escape a lecture, but perversely more intrigued at Pitch's purpose now he'd been interrupted in explaining it, Jack spun around midair to see what he was on about now. The little brown-haired boy was sitting on his bed, growing increasingly upset as he said something to his stuffed rabbit. Moving in closer, Jack finally picked up on the end of it.

    "Any sign, just so I know…" Jamie hesitated, and then pulled his rabbit closer to his face pleadingly, seriously, "So I know you're all real."

    "Precious," the word was a breath and Jack jumped at its proximity, seeing Pitch had silently come to his side, hanging by his shadow from the side of the house. The elder spirit's yellow eyes were bright as Dream Sand, watching through the window, though his smile could only be described as dark, "Another light snuffed." Even as the urge to flee rose like a sudden wind in Jack's chest, fighting the warmer feelings that had been planted, a restraining hand fell heavy on his shoulder, and Pitch's gaze turned knowingly to him, "Why don't you give him something else to believe in, Jack?" For a second, Jack's unease whirled, pressing against his ribs as he deciphered Pitch's meaning.

    His heart stopped. "You mean- me?" Jack's tone crackled like breaking ice in his surprise, but he didn't care, "But-"

    "Jack," Pitch's tone was admonishing, teasing, and when he saw Jack had returned his full attention to Pitch, the Nightmare King tapped the window with a shark's grin. "At such special times as these…" Jack leaned forward involuntarily, the smooth cadence of the words pulling him in, and the light of Pitch's eyes danced against his skin, "A person will believe in just about _anything_."

    As if in a trance, Jack turned back to the window. He blinked, and came back to himself, placing his entire palm against the glass. As the thick layer of frost spread, the glass popped and groaned in complaint and Jamie turned in surprise. Taking care, even while in shock at his own daring, to reverse his writing, Jack dragged his finger through the ice.

    "I. Am." Jamie read, moving from the bed. His eyes widened and the rabbit slipped from his slack fingers as he continued in a whisper, "Jack. Frost." And with a sharp clarity no one had ever had, his startled brown eyes focused on the winter sprite floating outside his window, and his hand rose to point as his volume took a similar jump upwards, "Jack Frost!"

    "It… Worked? Pitch!" Jack's delight spilled out as he glanced from Pitch back to Jamie, "He can- You can see me!" Jack trilled, exultant, a laughing flip punctuating his remark before he flew back up to the window, "You can really see me!"

    "Yeah," Jamie nodded, opening the window further with new glee, "I knew you all existed. I knew it!"

     _You all,_ Pitch repeated warily in his thoughts, golden eyes locking like a targeting system on the brown haired boy, _Maybe I let Jack approach him a bit too soon_.

    "Do you- do you remember that sled ride the other day? Down the streets?" Jack was asking excitedly, and when Jamie gave another exuberant nod, he continued proudly, "That was me!"

    "And snow days, are those you, too?" Jamie exclaimed, hopping up and down with excitement. At Jack's affirmative, he grinned, "Cool!"

     _Honestly, they may be on the same maturity level._ Pitch found himself smirking and scowled once to himself to clear the expression. Some thunder from the storm clouds choking up his lungs helped when Jack and Jamie laughed at some inane snow pun. Part of his plan was to keep Jack happy and either on his side or out of the battle, but something about seeing him so happy with some little brat rubbed him the wrong way. A cool hand grabbed his wrist though and he was yanked from his thoughts to the window.

    "This is Pitch," Jack grinned, watching as Jamie's eyes suddenly gained the ability to focus on the Boogeyman, "And he's responsible for scary movies and ghost stories." Jamie gaped as Pitch merely rolled his eyes, not removing his wrist from Jack's grasp.

    The young boy backed a bit away from the window, "J-Jack. That's the Boogeyman."

    "Yes, and I eat children," Pitch snarked, bearing his oddly shaped teeth apathetically.

    A fleeting scowl like a flurry of snow flew Pitch's way, shattering just as ineffectively across his apathy, and Jack shook his head, "Don't be scared. Pitch doesn't eat kids, actually he _saves_ -" The two spirits whipped around as a loud crash cut off Jack's heartwarming defense of the Nightmare King. It would have been so cute and dripping with sappiness that a tiny Christmas tree would have been born from the speech and Pitch would have had to stomp it out with a wide range of expletives the likes of which had not been heard for thousands of years. But that didn't happen- because Santa's sleigh had essentially crash-landed in Jamie's backyard.

    "Where's the Easter Bunny?" Jamie wondered aloud, nearly hanging out the window until Pitch instinctively pushed him back to safety with a blind shove, not taking his narrowing eyes off the sleigh. Toothiana and North were the only visible spirits on board, but it appeared they had back up in the form of…

    "Kids? What are they thinking, bringing kids?" Jack frowned, his jaw clenching, "The sleigh looks like it's falling apart!"

    Pitch finally tore his gaze from the paint-peeled, lopsided remnants of the famous sleigh and fixed Jack with a pointed look, "Desperation makes many a monster out of men."

    "Are you sure last of believers is here, Tooth?" North boomed, not having noticed the two enemy spirits hovering by their target's window.

    "Yes," she responded, flittering her now-flightless wings in a feebly anxious twitch, "We have to get to him before Pitch does."

    "An' how," Came a disgruntled Aussie voice from one of the children's laps, where the vestiges of the Easter Bunny remained until North snatched him up and replaced him on his shoulder.

    "He's kind of cute, now," Jack whispered to Pitch, before turning back to the window and holding out his arms, "Come'ere, Jamie. We gotta get you out of here."

    Afore-mentioned boy looked up from his search for the Easter Bunny, startled and wide-eyed, "Why?"

    "Santa's gone mad?" Pitch offered sarcastically, the icy death glare Jack threw in his direction bouncing off uselessly to the snow below. With a sigh, he continued more seriously, trying to convince the child Jack had apparently decided to kidnap, "We're not on good terms right now. Those fools are endangering children and we're trying to keep them from gathering up any more."

    Jamie's surprise grew to almost tangible proportions, "Really?"

    "Basically," Jack grinned feebly, gesturing again with his arms, "But it's like a game of keep away, you know? We gotta get going!"

    Jamie looked down at the Guardians, clambering across the snow, then up to Pitch, and across to Jack. The snow sprite faltered at the suddenly grave look on Jamie's face. "My grandma died last month," he stated, slowly, and when Jack seemed confused, he continued, "She slipped on the ice, and she couldn't get up, and the cold…" Well. It wasn't as if this hadn't happened before; Jack always knew it would happen, even, but… Pitch winced at Jack's crumpled expression, as if the statement had been a physical blow. Ice wasn't always Jack's fault, but he hung around Burgess so often that the ice there almost vibrated with his essence. "No one found her until she…" Jamie squeezed his eyes shut for a second and then continued, "Jack, you're friends with the _Boogeyman_ , and… The Guardians never hurt anybody. I'm not so sure you're the good guys." At this point, the two full-sized Guardians and Bunnymund had noticed Pitch's black figure, their alarmed exclamations rising through the air to Jamie's window as they sprinted forward.

    Pitch snarled and a Nightmare reared from the shadows beneath Jamie's bed, scooping the boy up onto its back, "Be that as it may, the Guardians must not have any more help than they already do."

    Jack finally broke from his daze and grabbed Pitch's arm, "What are you-"

    "Just putting him-"

    "STOP, PITCH!" North bellowed, breaking into the room. It appeared the few followers he had kept allowed him to retain his strength, at least, even if his workshop creations were still shutting down. "You will not harm another child!"

    Toothiana sprinted past him and pulled Jamie into her arms, dispelling the Nightmare and turning to glare out the window, "That's right-" Her glare faltered, and her wings gave a nervous almost-flutter, "Jack?"

    Bunnymund rose up on his hind legs, gripping North's beard to keep his balance on the giant's shoulder even as his ears went back, "Awful buddy-buddy with Pitch, ain'tcha, Frost?"

    Jack was, in fact, fully aware of the one hand still gripping the Nightmare King's arm, but his body didn't seem able to move. It was as if his mind had been cut off from the rest of him, throwing him out of his own body to view the scene from a horrifying distance. He'd thought he was ready to face his old… Allies. But face-to-face was an entirely different experience than he'd expected, the disappointment and betrayal that had dimmed in his memory was fresh and angered on his former companions' faces.

    "Jack," Pitch hissed out of the side of his harsh mouth, eyes never moving from the Guardians, "Breathe." With that, the spell was broken and Jack could move, and did, with a deep intake of breath. Jamie's eyes were as wide as Tooth's, and the boy's drawings were scattered across the floor from the brief scuffle betwixt Tooth and the Nightmare.

    "Jack…" North's voice was soft at its center, vulnerably caring there but edged with the bitter tang of betrayal, as he took an involuntary step forward. "How could you?"

    "I…" There was a pause as the Guardians waited for whatever explanation Jack might offer, "I can't say sorry," Jack croaked across the widening gap of dead air between him and the Guardians, "I can't regret being seen or gaining a family." North winced at the word. He'd seen how Jack had longed for belonging, and had hoped to provide him a place in their dysfunctional little family of Guardians. Maybe he hadn't quite gotten that sentiment across. _No,_ North thought, looking at Jack's distraught expression, littered with lines of guilt and anger, _I did not_. Jack turned back to Pitch here, with a pleading expression, "But I don't know if I can fight them, either."

    For a brief, reactive moment, anger flashed through Pitch, but the way Jack still had a hand clamped on his arm sent a mysterious cooling calm through his bones and he exhaled the fury in one condensed breath. At this point, merely keeping out of the fight would be enough. "As long as you don't help them, Jack," He demanded, a cruel smirk edging onto his darkening face as he sensed his trump card approaching, "No matter what happens next."

    A rushing sound, like a thousand tornadoes or the push of blood through a heart the size of a universe slammed through the still air and sent the Guardians running down through the house and out the back to their last believers, Jamie still safely ensconced in Tooth's trembling arms.

    Pitch fell through the shadows with a triumphant cackle, pulling Jack with him to reappear in front of the sleigh filled with some ten to fifteen children from all over the world. North immediately interposed himself between Pitch and the younglings; on a deeper instinct than thought, he aimed his twin swords at the Boogeyman in a ready stance. When even Tooth released Jamie to ready her fists, Jack found himself letting Pitch go. His staff angled before him, he settled into a defensive pose without thinking about it, only reacting to the hostility before him rather than any thought of the Guardians as being his enemies.

    "Maybe you're stronger than you thought, Jack," Pitch murmured, pleased, but not willing to take his eyes off the Guardians for a minute. The night was dark already, yet somehow as the rushing noise strengthened; it seemed that even the light of the streetlamps was dimming.

    North's eyes widened and his stance faltered when the first stars blinked out. The darkness was gathering from all directions, blocking their view of even the sky, and Bunnymund fidgeted uneasily on his shoulder.

    "We won't let you hurt the children," Tooth snapped, her tension coming to breaking point, "Even as we are now." North nodded, his resolution confirmed and his determination returning, and Bunnymund leapt down to stand on his own paws, "As long as we still have two feet to stand on, we'll stop you!"

    "Touching," Pitch drawled, his eyes alight once more, "But I believe your sentiment is misplaced." Horse-like shapes leapt in and out of the rushing darkness, falling like a never-ending tidal wave, crashing over houses and streets to engulf the town of Burgess as Pitch raised his arms in triumph, a broken laugh escaping as his Nightmares swarmed around them. "Do you still believe?" He shouted over the rush of the Nightmares, "Do you still believe you can fight fear?" The Guardians could not answer, their resolve not letting up, but the resignation of a last stand settling in.

    "Yes."

    Pitch's eyes narrowed as Jamie walked to stand in front of the Guardians, and one by the one the other children joined him. Jamie raised his chin defiantly with his tiny arms steady by his sides, "I do think we can defeat fear."

    A sneer spread like oil over the slight unease, "Hiding behind children, now, Guardians?"

    "Jamie, kids, what are you doing?" Jack's winds pushed at them, tugging their clothes gently to move them out of the way, but they merely re-settled their stances, and Jamie shot a sad look at Jack.

    "You're on the wrong side, Jack," he said, quietly, and the other children stood, confused at whom Jamie's statement was directed (for those who spoke English), but firm in their resistance against the Boogeyman.

    "Pathetic," Pitch growled, but then, in a low voice only Jack and the Nightmares could hear, ordered, "Don't hurt the children." Directly after the Nightmares whinnied their frightening assent, he called out, "There's more than one way break belief, little Guardians!" Anger tensed in his movements as he swung an arm forward, sending the waves of Nightmares towards the weakened Guardians.

    "No," Tooth whispered, but Jamie took one step forward, raising a hand to meet the Nightmares dead on.

    "You're just the Boogeyman. And _I'm_ not afraid of you."

    Gold sand, the color of Pitch's widening eyes, erupted from the spot and he stumbled backwards, away from the threat that pulsed against his skin with a menacing light. Even as he did so, Jack moved slightly in front of him, his mouth actually dry from the implication of the golden sand.

    "Sandy!" North boomed, and the little man pulled himself literally together, throwing North a wink before turning towards Pitch with a stern expression.

    "Stay back," Jack warned, turning his staff towards the most powerful spirit in the area, even as his heart cringed at the idea of hurting the cheerful man he'd already seen destroyed before.

    One solitary snowflake of sand formed and flew away from Sandy's head, his little mouth wide with horror and he looked to the Guardians, unleashing a barrage of images that had North shaking his head, hands held up defensively.

    "We did nothing! Jack betrayed us!" He protested, and Sandy turned wounded eyes to Jack, forcing the young sprite to give an involuntary twitch of guilt.

    "Not until they tossed me out," Jack defended, shaking his staff once when Sandy made as if to take a step forward, and his eyes narrowed, "But that doesn't matter any more." Jack extended a hand backwards and Pitch took it, pulling himself to his feet even as his Nightmares were screaming at the golden sand infecting their very essences and bursting into the Dream Sand they once had been. Jack charged, leaping over the crowd of children to face the Guardians dead on, but Tooth intercepted with a mean right hook. Ducking under lost him his momentum, but the sudden influx of the remaining Nightmares covered his lapse and he threw a veritable explosion of icy energy at Sandy, trading quick, glancing blows with the little man until something small smacked him upside the head and everything became an unfamiliar shade of black.


	3. An End to the Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning(s): Little OOC-ness for book!Pitch, but pretty in line with movie!Pitch, meaningless drama, bad jokes, etc.

    When he awoke, his back was pressed against something wooden and nearly the same temperature he was, with ice beneath him. A grainy texture was looped about his wrists, holding them together, and the same was true of his ankles. Cracking his eyes open, he winced at even the dull light of a sun just below the horizon, and slowly his restraints came clear to him. Dream sand. He closed his eyes again and thunked his head back against what could only be the side of North's sleigh. Couldn't they have just locked him up somewhere he'd never have to see them again? _Preferably nearby wherever Pitch_ \- Bright blue eyes snapped open, and flashed about the clearing for Pitch, but all he saw was the Guardians and the children standing around.

    "What did you do with Pitch?" He demanded, voice breaking only once as all Guardian eyes turned on him. Tooth was hovering about again, and Bunnymund towered over the children protectively, but not a soul answered. " _What_ ," he repeated, with more emphasis and less scratchiness, "Did you do with Pitch?"

    "Nothing. He ran off when you went down," Bunnymund threw in a sneer from his returned height, paw twitching for a boomerang, "You really choose the best mates, Frost."

    "He got beat up by Sandy first, though… And he did say he'd be back for you," Jamie volunteered, not even blinking under the sudden, incredulous stares of his fantastical companions, "What? It's the truth." The other children were squinting now, mumbling amongst themselves as if trying to pinpoint what their companions were talking to.

    "You tryin' to help them out, ya little bugger?" Bunnymund asked with only an edge of exasperation, kneeling down and herding the children further away from the trapped winter sprite. Only Jamie's plaintive "…but if he hadn't told me not to be scared…" drifting back on the wind.

    "Jack." Tooth was suddenly by his side, fluttering agitatedly just above him, "Were your memories worth that much to you? Is that why-"

    "My memories?" Jack interjected, incredulous at this turn in the discussion; "You think I'd join Pitch for _memories_ of a life stolen from me?" When her violet eyes began to gleam slightly with suppressed tears, he scoffed, "I _forgot_ about them, actually. Take them if you want," With the limited mobility the golden cuffs leant him, he slid the tube of teeth out of his front pocket and tossed onto the snow next to him, "I don't know what I wanted them for, anyway. Any family I had then is dead. And now…"

    Tooth leaned in, still fighting tears, "Jack, we wanted to be-"

    Jack's face darkened, leaning forward threateningly, and it felt like ice crept through Tooth's veins at the sight, cutting her off and pushing painfully through her heart. " _Now_ , I have Pitch."

    "True," a voice hissed from the shadows, and the cuffs about Jack's limbs seemed to rapidly decay, a previously unnoticed Fearling limping hastily along them. Jack grabbed the staff they'd kept far too close to him, as confident as they had been in their victory, and flipped back over the sleigh, cradling the Fearling in the way he once would have held a Baby Tooth.

    "Jack," Pitch called with false nonchalance, stepping from the shadows of a tree just beyond the clearing's end, and continuing in a sing-song voice, "Hurry."

    "Oh, no," North started forward, "We not letting you go so easy, Pitch."

    The other Guardians readied themselves; Sandy with his chains, Tooth with her re-energized fairies, Bunnymund pulling out a boomerang. At first, they all stood between Pitch and the kids, as Jack landed softly next to Pitch.

    "I'm far too weak for this showdown," Pitch hissed quietly to Jack, his eyes fixed on the Guardians with a calm he evidently didn't feel, "We need to leave." Letting the volume of his voice grow, he addressed the Guardians, "Really, it's been great seeing you again, but I'm afraid my companion and I have urgent business elsewhere. It's a shame we'll have to cut this short."

    "Bit suss, you leaving when the party's just gettin' started, mate," Bunnymund growled, his ears pushing back as his fur bristled. In the space of his statement, he'd stalked to the left side, Sandy had reformed himself a ways behind the pair of renegade spirits, and Tooth had flutter-jumped to the right. The Guardians' teamwork and ability to read one another really was flawless, as they had jumped into position as one, using Bunnymund's usual sarcasm as cover.

    "You act big, but you can't defeat me. Not really." Pitch scorned, his hand surreptitiously on Jack's arm for balance, "There will always be fear. And you know it." His eyes caught movement off the edge of his vision and he forced a nasty grin he very much did not feel, "Why else would we have so many uninvited guests?"

    The Guardians readjusted their weapons uneasily. What was left of the wave of Nightmares prowled just outside the circle of Guardians, flaring their nostrils and rolling their glowing eyes. However, they didn't make a move to attack the Guardians no matter how easy a target they had.

    "I don't think they're here for us," Tooth corrected with a tenseness tempered only by hurt as her eyes met Pitch's and Jack's in turn. " _We're_ not afraid." A bit lip as she came to some hurried decision. One could practically see the choice as it settled in her face, fidgeting about as if trying it out for size. Toothiana held out a feathered hand, "Jack… There's still time to turn back…" She fluttered a bare half a foot forward, and the male Guardians' expressions softened at her dismay- well, save Bunnymund's, "Please." Maybe it was even honest. Jack knew Tooth had readily accepted Jack as a Guardian, and to have her turn such open, regretful eyes on him was more than enough to send a twinge through the center of his chest. He'd betrayed them. He hadn't just flown off and let them fight their battle, been neutral like he'd wanted originally. No, he'd actively participated on the opposing side. Yet, she still wanted him back after…? After everything? They wanted him back after he'd worked against them and lost. He could still mess around with Bunnymund and brainstorm with North and giggle with Toothiana and Sanderson… For half a second, he saw it all laid out before him. A future as a Guardian of children…

    But in that moment Pitch pulled his hand away from Jack. His opposite hand came out covertly to steady himself against a tree, almost like he had already withdrawn- already given up. Jack looked up at the Boogeyman, and saw the hidden tension in his face, and the way his shoulders slumped, curling inward defensively at the very idea. _That probably frightens Pitch more than defeat,_ Jack realized, and something clicked in his chest like the last piece of a puzzle, just as the Nightmares lunged for their master.

    Though Pitch didn't let himself cry out as they swarmed him, Jack's adrenaline spiked as he leaped and flew and scrabbled forward, trying to keep up with the pseudo-horses' gallop back, and with one final, desperate lunge, he grabbed one of Pitch's hands, their gazes meeting. All he could see were Pitch's eyes widening over a frightened snarl before the Nightmares pulled them underground.

    He'd made his choice.

    "Jack!" Tooth cried, and Bunnymund actually had extended a paw helplessly, unconsciously, when they saw the boy join Pitch in his less-than-figurative fall. Sandy closed his eyes, his sand silent and still, and North slowly sheathed his dual blades. It felt as if they'd actually lost him, lost him in the same way they'd lost Sanderson, but they hadn't- not really. Jack had not been lost and he had not been taken from them. Jack had left.

    The clearing was empty now, save for the Guardians and the children, and the crowd moved towards the Guardians in a ramble of concern and triumph that the big bads had been defeated. Comforting the children and assuring them that things would be back to normal soon, they ferried them home and back to bed within the hour and soon had holed themselves up in the globe room at the North Pole.

    It was quiet, and empty. The yetis were rushing about downstairs, creating and fixing in a flurry of activity, but in the globe room, even the elves were absent, leaving the Guardians alone to watch as the big globe lit like a slow rain of fireflies.

    "Fairies working double time, Tooth?" North remarked softly, his large hands crossed motionlessly in his lap.

    She nodded and stroked a hand through her crest once, "The girls got loose and needed something to distract them after Jack…" Intentionally, she stopped herself, "Well, they're showing themselves a bit more, too. And Sandy's backing us all up."

    Sandy was clearly absent, even with his small form physically slouched in one of the many chairs currently scattered about the globe; his eyes were glassy and distant as he strove to bring the children's flagging belief back into existence.

    A moment of lingering silence, and Bunnymund slammed his fist to the wall like it was Pitch's smirking mug, "Damn it!"

    Tooth leapt up, "Bunnymund!"

    "We won! We bloody well chased off Pitch and it's worthless 'cause that little son of a snowflake isn't here to float about and laugh at us!" He punched the wall again, and the fight left him, drained to the floor and puddled at his feet. "Damn it…"

    

    For Jack and Pitch's part, they had been left in something of a sticky situation. It was likely the Nightmares would have continued to stampede unimpeded for quite some time if left to their own devices. However, the demented dreams failed to consider that they had pulled Pitch down into the depths of his own domain. "You…" Pitch rose under their kicking, biting storm, eyes glowing in the darkness like a pair of deadly beacons, "Impudent nags!" A rain of Fearlings, large and small descended on the Nightmares, biting like fleas and causing the Nightmares to trill and stomp, but they parted, trotting the edges of the room, in between stalagmites and broken war machines, until a darker shadow, visible even in the dim light of the cavern passed over, finally chasing the Nightmares out of the first room and down the tunnels in eye-rolling, whickering fear. "That's what I get," Pitch rolled his shoulders, breath coming pained and heavy, "for working with foreign material."

    Jack was still lying spread eagle on the floor, but his emotional exhaustion was not enough to prevent a quip. "So you're one of those Isolationists, huh?"

    Pitch sat heavily beside Jack's prone body, arms crossing over his chest, and scowled fiercely at the winter sprite. Jack was less than impressed, and stuck his tongue out at the elder spirit. With bared teeth, Pitch warned, "Don't make me bite that off."

    "Ew."

    "Uh-huh." The silence dragged itself around the two for a moment, but Pitch gnashed his teeth irritably and scared it away. There was something gnawing at him that didn't make sense. A detail that didn't mesh with his current understanding of reality. "You came after me."

    Jack pushed up to rest on his elbows and better see Pitch's face in the gloom, "Huh?"

    "Why did you… You could've left me to the Nightmares. You could have- joined the Guardians again." Pitch turned his gaze downward and away, hiding his usually sharp features and Jack felt his confusion grow with his ability to read the other's expressions stripped from him. "Why are you here?"

    He sat up completely. Grabbing Pitch's face in his hands, Jack turned the Nightmare King toward him, and he'd wanted to say something, but the expression that met him at such close proximity rendered him temporarily speechless. There was none of the hatred he displayed for the Guardians nor any of the slightly menacing playfulness he'd shown Jack; Pitch was just… Lost. His eyes were wide and his teeth were bared defensively like an alley cat expecting abuse. "Pitch," Jack hesitated, and leaned forward, resting their foreheads against one another with a nervous check of his companion's expression. When Pitch deliberately closed his eyes, the winter sprite relaxed- he could never tell if his actions to comfort another would backfire due to his low temperature. It seemed, though, Pitch was not as blazing hot as the Guardians had been. Instead of feeling like he might melt, the contact was only lukewarm, and so, to Pitch, it was likely he felt only slightly cool.

    "Why are you still here?" repeated Pitch, the glow from his eyes still lost behind his eyelids.

    Honestly, then, "We're family." The twitch Jack felt from Pitch obviously marked this answer as too vague. He had to give more if he wanted more, right? Without allowing any time to think himself out of it, Jack pressed on, "You know what I've been though, and even… Even had it worse. The Guardians never understood, and when- And during Easter, they just gave up on me, without letting me explain. You were right; they'd never really believed in me. They drove me out for a mistake. But you didn't even need an explanation from me, when I couldn't fight them," And that seemed to sum it up for Jack, but he wasn't sure he'd said enough for Pitch, and tried again to drive it home, "We're family, and… I've finally picked a side, I guess."

    Pitch opened his eyes, and Jack prepared to lean back, give Pitch some breathing space, but Pitch's hands rose to hold the winter sprite's in place on either side of his face, and Jack settled back down. "No way to back out, now, Jack." Pitch's voice was tired, and just teetering on the edge of biting. Their eyes met again in the gloom and something in the tone softened with the volume, "I don't let go of family."

    After a split second in which Jack registered exactly what Pitch was proposing, Jack gave a lopsided grin, "That's two of us, then."

    

    "What do you think Jack's doing right now?" Tooth wondered aloud, a week after they had seen him for the last time, during what was becoming a daily visit to North's workshop.

    "Dunno," Bunnymund shrugged, painting each red robot (which Phil handed him solely to dry off) blue. Sandy was out and North was inventing something new, so the two were visiting the yetis more often than the other Guardians. Bunnymund didn't have much to do until next Easter and he was 'helping' make up for lost time in the workshop; as for Tooth, she was allowing her fairies a little more independence lately. Their time in the cages had them craving the frantic flight of work more than per usual.

    "I hope he's okay," murmured Tooth, winding one of the robots and letting it escape down the spiraling ramp, much to the elves' delight as they tripped and rolled after it. "You know, in spite of everything."

    "We did jump the gun a bit at Easter," Bunnymund admitted, accepting another newly red robot from Phil and dipping his brush in blue paint, "We pro'lly should have listened to the kid first."

    "Oh, Bunnymund," With a twitch of her wings, she was hovering over him, her upside down grin in his face, "I never thought you'd say something so mature about Jack."

    A paintbrush was waggled dangerously close to her face and Tooth backed away hastily, still grinning at Bunnymund's expression of stern embarrassment, "Look, just cause I wasn't best mates with Frost when he first came in don't mean I didn't warm up to the sprog- so to speak. I was just so torn up over what happened with Easter, I didn't give the kid a chance."

    "You think he didn't join Pitch until after?"

    "I know he didn't," Bunnymund sighed, putting down the half-red, half-blue robot and reaching into a leather pouch, "He really did leave this behind." In his paw was what Jack had professed to be fighting Pitch for in the first place: a small golden tube with the memories of Jack's human life, and it hadn't even been opened. Tooth's delicate fingers closed hesitantly around it, and as she brought the tube close to large eyes, Bunnymund couldn't help but wonder if he'd made the right choice letting her know.

    "RARGH?"

    But apparently, Bunnymund had more pressing, life-threatening-type matters to deal with- Phil had finally looked down and noticed what was going on with the robots he'd just painted red.

    "Gotta hop, Tooth!"

    

    "What's with that book, anyway?" Jack asked, draped along the back of the dilapidated armchair Pitch was sitting in, in such a way that Pitch's head rested against his side. Pitch cast an unreadable look upwards.

    "It's important."

    "I got that, Captain Obvious."

    "Back to pet names, are we, snookums?"

    Jack sat half up and stared for a moment as the Nightmare King continued reading, as if the word snookums had never passed his thin gray lips, but leaned back to his previous position, watching for whatever it was that flew around down here, and rephrased his question, "So what is that book about?"

    "It's about very old things," Pitch replied with a smirk, but knowing he'd pushed Jack almost to his limit this time, closed the tome and settled it reverently in his lap, "It talks about us, actually." Jack turned and slid down to sit on the arm of the chair, batting his eyes in a silent, mocking 'oh, please, tell me more' gesture that didn't fully disguise his genuine interest. "It's supposed to be a sort of manual for spirits, written by some former Guardian of Wisdom, I suppose. Whoever it was is long gone, now. Likely he withered away from lack of belief and even the other spirits can't see him now."

    "That 'weakening with disbelief' thing always makes me glad I never fully joined up," Jack admitted, leaning more over the book, "But I didn't know it could get that bad."

    Pitch waved a hand dismissively, just avoiding knocking over Jack's staff where it rested on the arm opposite Jack, "Only after a millennia or so. And I've only seen it happen once, when I first… came together as myself. The book talks about that, too, you know: the making of spirits and their powers. However," He held up one patient finger to forestall Jack's questions, "It's all very cryptic and doesn't always make sense."

    "Like…?"

    "Such as, according to the text, a chicken's teeth should be ground under the watch of the full moon as part of a recipe to make poison that will fade a spirit." Pitch paused, waiting for when Jack's look of horror would fade to realization, but when it appeared that Jack's brain wasn't actually going to get that memo, he continued dryly, "A chicken doesn't _have_ teeth."

    "Oh," Jack sank a bit further into the chair, half his weight on the arm and half pressed into Pitch's side, "Oh, yeah that's weird."

    "I was trying to find anything that would help us, but it seems useless." A Fearling squeezed out from Pitch's sleeve and then under the book, re-inflating underneath it to hobble the old tome back to the bookshelves behind them.

    "Help us to escape?"

    "I've got a second exit, Jack."

    "Right."

    "Indeed." Pitch sent a sidelong glance at the frost spirit beside him. _The daft snowflake followed me down believing he wouldn't come back up_ , he thought with a strange tightness in his chest and shook his head free of that web of thought, "No, I was trying to figure out whether that damned Sandman has any other weaknesses. If he hadn't been freed, we would have won."

    Jack sank a bit further into the chair, and this time, Pitch shifted over to accommodate his slow invasion more comfortably, "It seems to me, that the Guardians are just very good at working together."

    "Are we going to beat them down with trust exercises and team building activities, then?" The disdain practically dripped from Pitch's statement yet not a single drop seemed to sink in for the still-cheerful winter sprite.

    "Maybe," Jack shrugged playfully, but when Pitch's hand twitched irritably towards the brittle and delicate bones of his wrist, he elaborated, "We could start our own group. There are other spirits that don't like the Guardians, right? Like that gopher Bunnymund hates."

    "Groundhog," Pitch corrected automatically. _Actually,_ one hand drummed on the book in his lap, already thinking the idea over. _It's not an awful idea. There's the Cupid, definitely, and the Groundhog is a good bet. Maybe even Johnny Appleseed? Mother Nature and Father Time might be willing to at least look the other way. And what about the Leprechaun? No brownies, too touchy. And any rusalka are just out. The moon bunnies are too strangely attached to Lunanova- Man in the Moon- to be trustworthy. That, and no thought stays in their head past a grind of the pestle._ His current goal wasn't truly to rule the world, after all, just to be believed in by it- completely and undeniably, through whatever means necessary. Surely there were others who could feel the same. "If we did gather allies, it might give us an edge. But we would have to…" He winced and Jack grinned, catching onto the gist of his thought.

    "Do some trust exercises and teambuilding activities?" He suggested cheekily, now fully sitting in the chair and flush against Pitch's side. Pitch's dark scowl met Jack's sparkling grin head-on and Pitch looked away first, sighing.

    "We'll have to train together and establish trust, yes. There's no point in a team if it can't accomplish a goal together."

    "And we'll call it the 'Boot Camp of Friendship and Unicorns,'" Jack continued roughly in a drill sergeant's voice, spreading his arms grandly in front of them as if to show the vision with only the power of his will even as his brows furrowed pseudo-seriously, "No leavin' 'til you've established at least one BFF relationship, Private!"

    Pitch shifted, moving his arm out from under Jack's to along the top of the armchair, "…Sometimes, I wonder about you, Jack."

    "It's good to know I'm always on your mind, honey bunch."

    Jack didn't talk for a while after that, because he was trying not to be afraid that any noise would give away his location to Pitch.


	4. Getting to Know You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning(s): ridiculousness (blanket warning), not-exactly-pointless fluff, creepiness, Tooth steals spotlight, Pitch being a creeper, etc.

    "Do you think Jack thinks about us?"

    The target of Tooth's almost infatuation-level obsession with talking about Jack was North this time. Another week had passed, and he was the only one not sick of Tooth's preoccupation, perhaps because what he was working on was so closely tied to Jack. "Maybe," he replied patiently, putting the final tweaks on his project and tapping it once more with a triumphant, "Aha!"

    "What? Is it done?" Tooth asked, already across the room and hovering behind him.

    "Yes. And is only little bit dangerous to turn it on!"

    "Dangerous- what-"

    "HAAAHAHA _HA_ HAHA!"

    A burst of snow came from the device and fluttered peaceably through the air, somehow continuing to fall as if Jack himself were there with them.

    "It works!" North cried with his large palms held upward to catch the tiny flakes.

    "Beautiful," breathed Tooth, her pupils large and darting as, for once, her wings did not follow that impulse and she remained stably at one point in the air. Snow scattered from even her hovering and redirected quite a few flakes to freckle North's heavy red coat. She'd wondered why he was keeping this room so cold he'd needed to wear it.

    Pulling one palm in to inspect the snow critically before it could melt, North remarked, "Now just have one problem."

    "What's that?" asked Tooth, not taking her eyes off the falling crystals.

    "All flakes are same."

    "Is that really a big issue?"

    "Yes."

    

    "I wonder if they'll make Christmas," Jack yawned aloud, leaning against Pitch's slumped back as he turned another page and knowing he would be ignored. It had been the theme of the week, after all; whenever Jack brought up some thought or pondering regarding the Guardians, Pitch would let it go unanswered, unless directly pertaining to their _devilish plots_ : sarcasm intended. They sat somewhere in the labyrinth of Pitch's library, the bookshelves towering stories above their heads, surrounded by open books in a multitude of languages. Spirits must be able to communicate with humans, and so were given the ability to speak and understand any language in place from their creation on. Jack, however, had only been around 300 years, and his repertoire was limited, so whenever Pitch found a "relatively recent" book it was deposited on Jack's side of the aisle and, more often, when Jack found a book he couldn't read it was tossed haphazardly behind him to land somewhere in Pitch's field of vision. The two spirits were on the stark stone floor of the library, researching the two most elusive myths they intended to track down: Mother Nature and Father Time.

    "These two are a long shot," Pitch had admitted when they'd started the research, "But when the Guardians catch wind of us gathering spirits, you can wager they'll track these two down. We can, at the very least, preemptively gain their neutrality so our efforts aren't suddenly crushed. We almost _must_ approach them first, if only so they don't put a stop to the whole thing before it's begun." _A little like a mafia boss,_ Jack thought.

    They'd spent much of the week arguing and fine-tuning their plan for a counter group to the Guardians, and had come to an uneasy consensus. Firstly, they would need to find a different place for meetings than Pitch's cave, both to engender trust and to ensure the safer entrance to the lair remained secret. This was easier said than done and was moved to a lower priority on the list for sake of convenience. Secondly, the two decided that they couldn't possibly keep track of a group bigger than seven myths, making that the upper limit, and that the two of them would continue to operate as a separate unit outside the larger group should any decision made within the group go strongly against one or both of their own advantages or beliefs. Thirdly, they had decided the two most likely to join them would be Cupid, or Eros as he called himself, since, despite his small foundation of believers, he was horribly misrepresented and thus, resentful, and the Groundhog, whose long-standing rivalry with Bunnymund was legend. They would approach them after Nature and Time, and research the rest to find a good match. Which had led to this.

    "We're not going to find them," Jack groaned, leaning back more heavily against Pitch's back and startling a surprised "oomph" out of the man. Honestly, it was practically a heaven-sent miracle he'd been still, sitting in one place without a single snowball thrown, for as long as he had. Could Pitch really be willing to subject the both of them to any more torture that night? Mother Nature was rooted in a mystical clearing, and Father Time was in a Clock Tower; they weren't going anywhere, even if the two renegade spirits did not find the Tower and Glen's locations that very night.

    "Just keep looking," Pitch snapped, closing one book sharply and opening another with such irritated strength that a cloud of dust enveloped both spirits, prompting a round of coughing fits for them both before Pitch could continue, testily and huskily from the dust, "I know their locations are on page 451 of some book."

    "But there are _thousands_ of books," returned Jack, making a sweeping gesture the other man couldn't even see to emphasize the sheer number.

    "And _we_ are immortal," Pitch reminded him with a condescending half-lidded look over his shoulder.

    Jack would have dearly liked to hit Pitch with his staff, but it was lying a little longer than a body length away from him and he was so bored that he had no energy to stand up and get it. "We need to have some fun," he declared, turning and laying on his stomach so as to face the same direction Pitch was, "You said Father Time and Mother Nature are stationary, right?"

    The tone was leading, and Pitch did not like where it was going. "Yes."

    "Then they're not going to pull up their roots and run off now. We're taking a break. Outside. Somewhere snowy," Jack decided, the very idea of _fun_ revitalizing his spirit as he leapt to his feet in a burst of cold wind, grabbing Pitch's arm and his own staff in the same gesture, with a mischievous grin, "You might even enjoy yourself."

    "Jack, it'd just be a waste of time," Pitch responded testily, even as he followed the sprite out of the library and down the tunnels to the secondary exit.

    Jack affected a bad Londoner's accent, "And we are immortal."

    "If you weren't so useful…"

    "I'd still be your favorite?" Jack clasped his hands in front of him, "Really, truly, Mr. Black, sir?" They were nearly out and as soon as they hit moving air, Jack could drag Pitch wherever he wanted them to go. He just needed to distract him a moment or two longer… "Honey bunch?"

    Angled dangerously, Pitch's face contorted and his hands convulsed like claws. "Jack, snookums; let me see that pretty neck of yours," he reached out a hand invitingly, shadows clinging to it in a mockery of talons, and gave Jack the downright scariest smile the winter spirit had ever seen.

    "You're going to have to catch me, first!" He called, wondering if this could be counted as suicidal behavior on his part, even as he tacked on, without truly thinking through the consequences, "Come on, old man!"

    He barely avoided the first kamikaze Nightmare, but when the second one came, he twirled out of the way with a surprised, "whoa" before bursting into delighted laughter and heading for the cave mouth, brightened with the stars' light and that of a nearby town.

    Pitch stalked forward only a few more steps before he vanished in the gloom of the night, but the grinding of his teeth was still audible the first few times Jack avoided a Nightmare until even that, too, faded. Although Jack had meant them to travel a bit further- Russia, maybe, or the South Pole!—the snow about the secondary exit was more than enough for his devices. Actually, maybe too much, as he learned when he dodged a hit in a sharp left turn and smashed directly into a tree trunk, prompting it to dump its heavy burden in the form of one giant fall of snow. When he'd paused, arms held out to the side and a grumpy frown working its way across his face as the snow piles held their places on his head and arms, he'd fully expected a barrage of Nightmares or even just the black sand Pitch seemed to enjoy. It was a surprise, then, when out of the still and icy darkness of the night, laughter rang out over the snow.

    "That's a good look for you, Jack," Pitch chuckled from wherever he was hiding, and Jack wanted badly to scowl, but he couldn't help the grin tugging at his lips. When a Nightmare, calmed from its master's joviality, licked the crystal additions to Jack's wardrobe curiously, Jack gave in, his laugh startling the Nightmare back and shaking the snow from his body. The ceasefire did not last, however, and Jack choked on a giggle when long fingers brushed ticklishly up the back of his neck before the owner disappeared with a forebodingly amused snort.

    What? A snort can be foreboding.

    Spinning about, all Jack could see was distant, almost stationary stars and alternating trees, jostling and passing one another to fill his vision, but the grin stayed, his cheeks almost hurting from its duration.

    "Don't be a wimp, honey bunch," He taunted, his staff at the ready as he continued his slow, spinning surveyance of the landscape. And tripped.

    Flipping mid-fall with the help of his staff away from the spot he was at, he noticed several Fearlings limp and roll off into the shadows from where he had stood with quiet, burbling cackles.

    Jack jumped into a clearing lit by the light of the nearby town, "Why didn't you use those guys against Sandy?" He sprang over a flick of black sand at his feet and settled lightly to the side, "They seem more loyal than the Nightmares." A Fearling tripped him up again with that burbling cackle and he somersaulted backwards up to his feet again, just in time for Pitch, apparently having been intentionally thrown by a Nightmare, to hurtle into his stomach and tackle him to the ground, breaking his hold on his staff and sending it flying.

    The Nightmare King gave Jack a secretive smile, sitting on the sprite's legs and restraining his arms before he could get his breath back and escape, "Concede, and I'll tell you."

    "I…" Jack glanced over at his staff and saw that Fearlings were already hobble-dragging it into the darkness. He scrunched up his nose in dismay, but relaxed it with an exasperated sigh, "Fine." Pitch hummed his approval, standing and extending a hand in Jack's direction with a shark's grin. Jack took it with a ghost of a smile, "So, tell me why these guys stayed out of battle."

    "Technically, we didn't," Pitch returned cryptically, but he halted Jack's impatience with an upheld palm, into which crawled a tiny Fearling, supposedly from the shadows coating Pitch's arms. Like the others, it was like some sort of compressed shadow with two glowing orbs of golden light where eyeballs would be in a living creature. However, this Fearling was more lizard-shaped, almost like a tiny chameleon with its awkward, split-toe gait. "You understand how Sandy is composed mainly of sand, and how the Tooth Fairy's mind is spread over her fairies, I presume?"

    "I knew the first. That second explains why Tooth was so flighty, I guess," Jack said, without removing his eyes from the little Fearling looking up at him from Pitch's hand. He extended a curious finger in its direction and paused, looking up at Pitch for permission.

    Pitch rolled his eyes, "Go ahead." Finishing his arc of movement, Jack settled one finger gingerly on the Fearling's head. The skin gave slightly, feeling more like the surface tension on a calm lake's surface than the outer layer of a living being. Intrigued, Jack drew his finger down the Fearling's back and Pitch moved his hand slightly out of Jack's reach with a cough and a slight darkening of his cheeks, "That's enough."

    Looking between the two, eyes nearly squinted in thought and a half smile tugging at one side of his face, Jack guessed, "Did you feel that?"

    "The Fearlings," Pitch continued at a slightly greater volume, the didactic tone he was so fond of returning full force as he tried to finish his explanation, "Are just an extension of me. I share their experiences, and they, mine. They have absolutely no personality of their own, and most of the time I direct them only subconsciously, but I can take conscious control at any time and I am always aware of them."

    "It's like you've got a million bodies and one mind," Jack summed up, "And so you totally can feel what they feel."

    "And see what they see and smell what they smell, and so on," Pitch admitted with a twitch, "But that means I feel when they are hurt or... Converted." Jack looked up at that, surprise evident in his involuntary step forward, as if to protect the little creature from harm, "It's why I kept them out of the conflict. Like how I can change Sandy's dreams to Nightmares, he can pervert my Fearlings into joy, and when that happens," Pitch ground his teeth, the Fearling in his hand baring its own insubstantial fangs, "I lose a little bit of myself, and a little bit of my memory."

    Agape, Jack looked down at the delicate little creature that was scanning the clearing for danger, picking up on the larger portion's mood. "That's kind of awful," Jack replied, reaching forward again and petting the Fearling, despite Pitch's instinctive flinch backwards, "Does that happen when you make Sandy's dreams into Nightmares, too?"

    Pitch shook his head, clearly exerting considerable self control to keep from bolting as the tension in his body increased the longer Jack tried to soothe him through the Fearling, "He's more physically linked to his sand than mentally. It can act separately from him, if the situation calls for it."

    "Pitch," Jack paused in his petting of the Fearling, "Calm down. We're a family, now," Jack was emphasizing this every chance he got, "and you've got to be able to trust me." The Fearling and Pitch both shifted their gaze to Jack's, giving him a strangely echo-y feeling as he held his hand palm-up beside Pitch's, "Don't you trust me, by now?" The storm clouds gathered and, internally, Pitch gave an exasperated groan. Honestly, this boy was pressing his patience with this trust talk. He was still trying to cement Jack's trust in him, and though this could be a good step to that, it required Pitch to make a piece of himself vulnerable! _Gain what you give, huh?_ Pitch asked himself sardonically, not entirely surprised when the burbling laughter of the Fearlings echoed through his psyche. Over the millennia, he'd become a little masochistic for the sake of survival- it was easier to keep suffering if he could laugh at the pain, after all.

    With a supreme effort of will, Pitch tipped his main hand and allowed his Fearling self to crawl onto Jack's palm. The winter sprite's face lit up and he let out an awed, nervous laugh, glancing between Pitch's unreadable expression and the little Fearling currently sitting peaceably in his hand. "Is- I mean, am I too cold for it- you?"

    Pitch sighed, "You may distinguish verbally between my center self and the Fearlings, for the sake of convenience." Jack continued to stare expectantly at him, wide-eyed, and the Nightmare King addressed his original question with a roll of the eyes, "No, you're not too cold. Fearlings don't have a body in the traditional sense, and temperature doesn't quite register. Just don't freeze them." It appeared Jack had stopped listening after "you're not too cold" and was currently grinning down at the lizard-like Fearling in his palm, gingerly scratching beneath its chin and ignoring the way Pitch's arms crossed defensively and the color rose again in his cheeks. Honestly, the boy could show a little respect for what was essentially a piece of the Nightmare King. Plus, it felt… Odd.

    "The big thing that flies around in your lair," Jack started, still petting the Fearling but lifting his head to catch Pitch's eye, "Is that a Fearling, too?"

    "Yep," Pitch popped the 'p,' arms still crossed and turning to look at the light edging over the far horizon, "It'll be daylight soon, and I'm not too sure how the Fearlings will hold up under the sun right now." _Or how well I will_. "We should be heading back."

    The lack of transition didn't faze Jack, and he nodded, slipping the Fearling into his hoodie's pocket gently and walking past Pitch in the direction of the cave. "Let's go, then," he called over his shoulder, plucking his staff from the bush the other Fearlings had dragged it under and pausing until Pitch caught up. "We've already talked about how you're alike to Sandy and Tooth…" Jack's teasing tone gained a wary glance from the elder spirit, "So is your similarity to the kangaroo that you both have smaller, adorable forms?" Pitch grimaced, and Jack laughed when the Fearling he carried nipped the hand in his pocket as fiercely and, unfortunately for it, ineffectively as it could.

    

    "Hello, Jamie," Tooth whispered, smiling at the sleeping child. The boy had knocked out another tooth attempting to sled down a tree-filled slope and Tooth had decided to take his case herself. He really was a remarkable kid. On the wall across from his bed, hand drawn pictures of the Guardians hung by spell-o-tape and there was a more recent addition of a Bigfoot with the text 'Phil?' scribbled beneath it. Tooth couldn't help a giggle, noticing a reference book on myths lay open with Phil's distinctive signature on Bigfoot's page.

    There was North and his sleigh, as well as Tooth, surrounded by flying teeth of all sizes. Bunnymund had his cute and "cool" forms represented on the same sheet, and Sandy got several papers to himself in various battle poses and just one where he was entirely asleep. Tooth fluttered forward a bit, closer to the wall, and two sheets of paper slid off Jamie's desk, making Tooth dive forward and catch them with a minimum of crinkling before they could skid along the floor. One never knew what could wake a child. She was about to settle them back in their original positions, when their content caught her eye.

    The top sheet was a picture of Jack, crouching with his shepherd's hook in hand and a smile on his face, the words "I am Jack Frost" scrawled along the bottom in heavy-handed blue crayon. Curious, Tooth's crest puffed and she shifted that page underneath the other to see what else Jamie had deemed unfit for his wall. When she registered exactly what it portrayed, a hand flew up to cover her mouth, and she couldn't hold back a regretful, "Oh, Jamie." It appeared Pitch's existence was still as strong to Jamie as it was to the Guardians, as the page was almost entirely scribbled over with heavy black crayon- two golden eyes, a sharp grin, and a reaching gray hand were the most defined images on the page. There was an impression in the page though, that popped out when she ran her fingers along the picture, and Tooth flipped the paper over, prepared for anything. On the back, Pitch stood, facing the side of the page, and at his back, facing the opposite direction, was Jack. Neither of them smiled in this picture and Tooth flipped the paper back over, settling the pages back down where they had been before the movement of her wings disturbed them.

    "…Tooth Fairy?"

    The Fairy whirled quickly, but carefully, trying not to displace anything else in the room, and saw that Jamie had sat up, and was rubbing one eye free of sand, with the other blearily focused on her form.

    "Hi, honey," she trilled nervously, moving to his bedside and hovering above him.

    "Is Pitch back?" He asked, the slurred form of his speech revealing that he was still not entirely awake.

    "No, no. Everything's okay," Tooth soothed, giving him an anxious smile, "Now just go back to sleep, okay?" Even though he nodded and lay back down, Tooth only relaxed once he was entirely asleep. It was Tooth Fairy etiquette, darn it, that one only worked when the children were sleeping. In fact, now that she thought of it, it was Guardian policy to finish before a child woke. The only one who really interacted with children had been… Would have been Jack.

    "I wonder," she asked herself as she flittered out the window, "if he still does."

    

    "Found it!"

    The cry echoed triumphantly through the arched ceilings and miles-long aisles of the library, and a lone Fearling popped its head out of Jack's pocket in response to the loud noise.

    "Their names are right on page 452 of this, this traveler's guide thing," He explained to it excitedly, gesturing with the book for emphasis, "If I hadn't glanced over to the other side, I never would have seen it. 451, my foot, Pitchling!" Jack paused and ducked his head; he had only been calling this particular Fearling that in his head up until this point, and he could only pray the main portion of Pitch hadn't been paying too much attention to his outburst. Although, he did need the other myth to come and help him to translate. Jack could recognize Mother Nature and Father Time's real names, but the rest of the book was in some language from long before Jack had existed. Only the expertly hand-drawn pictures of different mythical areas of the world had allowed him to divine the book's purpose.

    Afore-mentioned Boogeyman materialized from the shadows between the books in Jack's area and cocked a brow at the younger spirit, "Pitchling?"

    "Uh, well, cause it's you, but tiny, and, um," Jack elaborated with a placating grin, "You seem like you don't want me to do it again?"

    "Don't," Pitch agreed, before stepping forward with a hand outstretched and gesturing once in the book's direction. Jack dropped it into the elder spirit's hand, his own hand returning to his pocket and petting the Fearling there as had become a habit while he was searching the library's texts. Pitch visibly relaxed, but fixed Jack with the evil eye anyway on principle before he flipped through the book to page 452, "So I was off by a page; oh, well, no matter."

    "Is that really it?" Jack asked, coming forward to see Pitch's face more clearly as the Nightmare King read through the brief descriptions. He didn't want to get his hopes up only for the passage to turn out incorrect or merely fantasy.

    "Yes, it is. The author is someone I trust implicitly when it comes to this sort of information," Pitch replied, closing his eyes briefly to retain the information and closing the book.

    "Who wrote it?"

    With a twist of the wrist, Pitch displayed the front cover of the old book and tapped a spider-thin finger on the front cover without a trace of amusement, "Me." The next moment the book had disappeared somewhere in the shadowy pockets of his robe, and he was stalking down the aisle with only a crook of the finger compelling Jack to follow. Snatching up his staff where it leaned against the bookshelves, Jack leapt after the shadowy figure ahead of him and readjusted his pace until he could walk alongside him.

    Only after deciding that Pitch disappearing from irritation would not leave him stranded (since he could just scale the bookshelves and find his path out that way), did Jack press, "You wrote books?"

    "I must have," Pitch replied with a smirk, not slowing his pace, "S'got my name on it and all." Sobering, he sent a complicated glance at the towering bookshelves, "That particular memory is gone."

    "Sandy got it?"

    The silence was answer enough, and Jack succeeded in pushing down his curiosity for the entirety of the trip to the place he thought of as "Pitch's office." Whenever Pitch simply disappeared without explanation, it was highly likely Jack could find the spirit sulking or thinking or talking aloud to himself in that room. It was smaller than the other caves with less broken machines of war and more damaged armchairs and tables. Everything in the lair was old, but the books Pitch kept in that room, in a small, intimate wooden bookshelf, were ancient. Older than the books on the spirits and older than Pitch could even remember; he rarely, if ever, read them and allowed Jack to breathe near them only with supervision. It was slightly darker in here than in the other rooms of the cave, which Jack supposed was because the other caves had somehow been adjusted in order for Jack's navigational abilities to remain semi-useful. He still hadn't located a single light source.

    The desk furthest from the entrance to this cave (it opened off the library and had no other exits Jack had discovered) was where Pitch kept all his paper and pens and was, in fact, where he was headed now. A slight, contrived breeze, and Jack landed in a seated position on the edge of the old, sturdy maple wood, his heels hanging over the side, but not bouncing off the desk as was his usual tendency. The wood was just as old as most of the objects down below and it whorled and curved like a single piece. Although there were nearly invisible lines marking the edges of its drawers under Jack's heels, making him wonder, not for the first time, if it had been carved from a single, enormous tree. Yet- again not for the first time- he dismissed the thought as unimportant and flashed a snow-sparkle grin at Pitch's exasperated glance. The Nightmare King took no further measures in removing Jack from his current workspace and the winter sprite took it as permission to stay, twisting just slightly to the side to see what Pitch was doing. The elder spirit had laid the old book flat and open in the center of the desk and took Jack's crossed ankles in one hand to lift them from the drawers' front so as to rifle through their contents and draw out a yellowed, rolled-up parchment. Once an amused Jack's feet had been replaced in their previous position, he gave the parchment a significant glance, brushing Pitch's side with a bare foot for good measure and adding in plain verbal communication, "So what is that, exactly?"

    "A map," Pitch spread it out next to the travel guide and drew a long finger across the line of text scribbled under what Jack presumed were the two entities' entries that they were looking for. His grayish brow creased in frustration for a moment, and Jack found himself drawing his thumb down the lizard-like Fearling's back again, quickly drawing his hand from his pocket and replacing it with the other on his staff when Pitch's sharp gaze jumped to him. "Jack," the Boogeyman stood up entirely, posture effortlessly predatory as his new height let him loom rather ominously, "I don't think you quite understand the depth of the connection between myself and the Fearlings. They aren't pets; they are me." An accusing finger towards Jack's pocket, "That is me in there, and I think I deserve more respect than your average household animal."

    "I know that," Jack retorted, losing steam at the irked and vaguely cornered expression on Pitch's face, "I just thought you might need to calm down a little."

    The almost-fear faded to suspicion with that tint of anger still shading the edges, as Pitch loomed closer, "Really? You haven't exactly shown it. Do you really see that we are one?" Never losing eye contact, he took one of Jack's hands off his staff and relocated it to his own cheek, taunting softly, "Not quite the same as manhandling a Fearling, is it? Are you still so bold?" The Fearling crawled out of Jack's front pocket and onto the desk, and Jack couldn't help but feel a small pang of betrayal that Pitch felt the need to distance the more vulnerable portion of himself from their argument. It only fed the blizzard, though, making the winds in Jack's chest crash and spin more tightly.

    Gritting his teeth to keep his own temper in check, Jack spat, "Yes." Pitch raised his eyebrows and spread his hands as if daring Jack to continue and the winter sprite's cheeks burned as he tried to think of how best to get his message across. He set his staff carefully on the surface of the desk with a muted clatter and brought his other hand up to Pitch's face, drawing his thumbs carefully over the cheekbones of a surprised Boogeyman's face. _Expected me to back down, huh?_ Jack thought with a bit of victorious venom, _You forgot I'm not afraid of you._ The situation at hand, while unexpected, was actually something of a boon, and the winds inside Jack settled slightly. He could now satisfy any curiosity he had about the Boogeyman's face without the other able to raise any real protest. He did present the challenge, after all, and it would be all kinds of shameful for Pitch to back out now. Spreading his fingers slightly, he drew them lightly down Pitch's cheeks, already aware of their slight warmth from the fall into the Nightmare King's lair, but more focused, now, on how the texture was nearly the same as his own cheeks, despite the difference in coloration. He'd almost expected something rubbery, from the way Pitch's skin seemed to shy away from the color pallet entirely, sticking with shark-like shades of gray that darkened as they approached his torso. An analytical swipe across the forehead had Pitch squint his eyes shut instinctively, and the following curious run of Jack's fingers down the bridge of the elder spirit's generous nose ensured that they stayed that way. After Jack had slid a finger along Pitch's jaw line, he hesitated, but the phrase in for a penny, in for a pound seemed appropriate, and he let his hand press flat, gently, along Pitch's throat, feeling the Boogeyman swallow convulsively at the contact. There was no change in texture over the graduated shades of gray down Pitch's throat, and when Jack felt the back of Pitch's neck curiously, following the main line of separation between light and dark gray, he found the sameness continued all the way around. The wiry muscles where Pitch's spine met his shoulders were stiffened defensively and Jack gave a tentative, gentle squeeze before he moved on, taking up one of Pitch's hands next. Pitch hesitantly opened his eyes when he felt Jack's exploring fingers leave his face and neck entirely, only to reappear on his hand. Obediently, he followed the tug Jack gave and held his hand up for inspection, that cornered, confused wrinkle appearing once again in his brow line as he tried and failed to decipher what was going through Jack's head.

    It was as if Jack had never had permission to just touch someone before, in a friendly sense. Pitch knew he didn't have any close friends among the immortals, the other spirits, nor did any living being possess the capability to see the winter sprite. What he didn't know was that those who Jack _was_ acquainted with still thought him too cold for the casual touches they bestowed on other spirits. Jack had even trained himself to avoid brushing past or standing near other people, since he tended to drain the heat from the area and cause people to shudder and glare without any actual malevolent intent. As soon as he'd realized his temperature didn't bother Pitch, he'd dove into the friendly gestures he'd craved with a vengeance. After all, as of yet, the only spirits to completely disregard his temperature to touch him had been Pitch and… Well, Tooth. But Tooth had really spent most of her time worried about his teeth, and even she had shook her fingers and rubbed her hands together after examining his dental assets. So, Jack couldn't help but be painfully curious about the texture of Pitch's palm (rough, and bigger than he'd expected when he pressed their palms together), and what his arms were like (when he pushed the shadows away, there were dark hairs, invisible at first glance, that made the back of Pitch's forearm almost fuzzy), and even what the Boogeyman's feet might look like (but he felt that might be pushing it too far, since almost every other spirit he met had some sort of unholy affection for shoes, or had feathers and fur that made shoes unnecessary). He still had a message to deliver, though. So, when he'd finished with Pitch's hand, he took hold of both of them and pulled the Boogeyman's arms around himself, and then looped his own arms around Pitch, ignoring the way the tension that had eased from Pitch as Jack's inspection wore on suddenly returned threefold.

    "I'm not an idiot," the winter sprite declared, more patiently than he would have done but minutes earlier, "You aren't some pet to me and I know that the Fearlings aren't either." There was a pause as Jack formulated the rest of his explanation, Pitch still holding him like a bomb about to go off rather than a trusted friend. "Families… Touch, Pitch; it's not a sign of disrespect and I wasn't petting the Fearling because I was afraid to do the same to you. I just know you two, and all the others, are the same, now. That's all. And I thought you needed to calm down." And there was that tendency he had to repeat his main point, popping up again. He really needed to get a hang on that, but Jack's self-berating spiral was cut off when Pitch's arms finally tightened around him, and the strain in the Boogeyman's body eased.

    "We're really going to be a family," Pitch breathed, somewhere between awe and horror. Jack didn't want to laugh at Pitch's (far too late) revelation and break the fragile peace that floated in the air, so he just grinned against Pitch's shirt, brightening further when Pitch continued in a more usual, imperious tone, "You may- _pet_ the Fearlings if you must."

    "I must," Jack teased, and drew his hand down Pitch's back in mimicry of his actions with the Fearling, "Just look at how calm and huggable it makes you."

    Cheeks darkened, Pitch drew back, Jack's arms falling to his sides as he obligingly let the Boogeyman regain his personal bubble and jumping back up to sit on the desk edge.

    "Don't get used to it," returned Pitch after clearing his throat, reluctantly more clearheaded after the fight and subsequent bonding. The map was one from so long ago that the Americas were missing and Africa was a blob-like amalgamation of random coastlines, but it was the only one that still matched the coordinate system he'd used when he wrote The Travelogue Mythique. He actually had been about to toss something when Jack had intervened; however, there was no way Jack would hear it from him. No need to inflate the boy's head. The way to read it was coming back to him now, and though Pitch refused to put the credit on Jack, even in his own head, he couldn't help but feel the tiniest smidgen of gratitude.

    It was the first time Pitch had actually gained something from defeat.

    With that in mind, he did not shove Jack off the desk nor snap the boy's staff when he plucked it off the map and handed it back to its rightful owner. Whilst Pitch plotted out a course to the points in which his younger self had once found the two oldest spirits, Jack had picked up the chameleon Fearling, calling it now, 'Fearling One,' and placed it on his shoulder, chattering aimlessly in what served as its ear.

    "I am _trying_ to work," Pitch murmured dangerously, and Jack flashed a passing grin like a swirl of bright snow in his direction. " _You_ could try to be quiet."

    "Will do, Fearling Two!" Despite that one last mockery, Jack fell silent, watching as Pitch twitched once and resumed his plotting, trying to reconcile the map from back then with what he knew of the world today. Although Pitch didn't so much as glance up from the paper, the Fearling's eyes were focused on Jack's attentive face, and Pitch let a smirk cross his lips just once as the thought struck him, _Jack Frost is well and truly mine_.


	5. Visiting Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning(s): Hidden puns, ridiculousness (as usual), slight time sliding, Pitch and Jack being themselves....

    This was not a good plan. This was a very not good plan. This was a bloody soft-skulled, rushed and just- a bad plan! Pitch edged away from the half-light that spilled in from the cave mouth, "We should stop. Go home. Just, you know, wait until I've got my strength back and all. Or at least nightfall."

    "Oh, come on, scaredy cat," Jack jumped into the partial sunlight, "Look, I'm fine." When the Boogeyman favored him with a distinctly unimpressed sneer, he stretched a hand out, "Aw, do you wanna hold my hand?"

    The death-glare seemingly not enough answer as Jack continued to wave his hand about in Pitch's face, the elder spirit replied with low, crisp annunciation, "No. Jack. I do not. Want. To hold. Your _hand_."

    Leaning forward on his staff, with a very serious expression, Jack's thin lips and wide eyes edged right into Pitch's bubble before breaking into a grin as he grabbed Pitch's hand and yanked him into the dim light, "Too bad!" When Pitch didn't immediately burst into flames, he seemed to relax a bit, but every whisper of wind against the surrounding stones had him jumping and Jack squeezed the hand he still held captive, "The sun is behind the clouds, oh great and mighty Nightmare King."

    "It still bloody well filters through," Pitch muttered, allowing Jack to lead him further out of the cave, "People even get sunburns still, a cloudy day like this one."

    "I promise," Jack began solemnly, bringing his right hand, and coincidentally Pitch's left, to his heart, "That I will not fly above the clouds."

    "I won't follow you if you do," Pitch removed his hand efficiently from the winter sprite's grip, and whistled up one of the horse-sized Nightmares that still obeyed him, swinging onto its back before he gave Jack a show of shark teeth in a caricature of a smile, "I'll just catch your melted remains when you drop back down."

    "Oh, that's touching, Pitch."

    "I know."

    Jack had to admit, even with Pitch's sourpuss tendencies and susceptibility to his own fear-mongering talents, it was more fun to fly with someone at his side than it had ever been alone. He liked knowing someone was listening when he commented on a cloud shape or something going on below, and sometimes he got a positive response from the Nightmare King. Sometimes, not so positive. However, there were moments… At one point, Jack did actually get thrown almost straight upwards by the wind in one of its playful whims, and Pitch's face when he came back down unharmed had been absolutely priceless. He'd almost grabbed Jack out of the air as he fell, and when he realized Jack was fine, had made the most menacing face, but with such dark cheeks, Jack couldn't take him seriously. And, although Jack didn't exactly get tired while flying (the wind did all the work), occasionally, he would let himself plop onto the Nightmare's back and hang on to Pitch for a while, and Pitch wouldn't say a word. It made Jack wonder what would've happened if he'd tried something like this with the Guardians. Bunnymund would've checked to see if he had his staff (it was trapped in the binding potentially once used to keep cold air from his legs in his forgotten human years) and dumped him off. Sandy would have shivered and borne it and shivered and borne it and shivered and… Well, eventually Jack would've just ousted himself. North's large coat meant he probably wouldn't have even noticed Jack, but for some reason that felt… Sad. As for Tooth, she probably would have jumped a mile high had he even initiated a shoulder clasp with the manic fairy. With Pitch, he knew his temperature didn't bother the elder spirit and that Pitch was definitely aware of his presence.

    "Don't let your grip be so loose," He'd muttered the first time Jack had dropped onto the moving Nightmare's back, holding on to Pitch only gingerly, "Grip like that, the first acceleration you'll be off and falling and I swear I won't turn around." When Jack had immediately followed this advice, going so far as to rest his head on the Boogeyman's back with a mischievous grin, Pitch had only snorted and shook his head, "Better, I suppose."

    At times, Jack would bore of sitting still and leap off, pulling his staff from the bindings on his legs, and urge the wind to shoot him forward, ahead of the Nightmare and its black clad rider. Such it was, now, and Jack swirled freely through the eddies and mixed currents of the high altitude wind, being thrown this way and that as the wind juggled him about.

    "I'm honestly surprised he hasn't asked if we're there yet," Pitch murmured to the overly amused Nightmare beneath him. Anything that minutely irritated Pitch seemed funny to them now that he'd beat them back into submission. Ah, well; you can't win them all. Still, the Nightmare's increased schadenfreude often slapped a scowl back into his expression. Equally unhelpful was the feedback from his dissociated Fearling bits that seemed to agree with the Nightmare.

    "Hey Pitch!" Jack called from up ahead, letting the wind toss him just a little bit higher in preparation, "Watch this!" And with that the winter sprite dove straight down, leaving a heavy trail of snowflakes behind him. Pitch tried to ignore his heart stopping in his chest again until Jack floated back up, and Jack's falling-ice laughter set it going once more, "That town won't know what hit it. Only snowstorm in the country today."

    "Nice precision," Pitch drawled with deep exasperation, not allowing the extra hard thumping his heart was doing to make up for its lapse to show on his face. Despite the tone, Jack beamed, and gave an airborne, flourishing bow that dropped him a meter or so for his inattention. "You're lucky Father Time lives in such a cold area," he remarked, as they zeroed in on the bit of Russia they'd come for.

    "You're lucky the wind blew clouds in our path for us," Jack retorted, "Or you might've just turned around."

    "Ah, go and make fun. Just keep in mind, you'll have to stay very close to me when we visit Mother Nature, or you might melt," Pitch warned, semi-playfully. "And if I refuse to cooperate, you won't get a chance to meet her," With a grin more like a baring of teeth, he added sarcastically, "Wouldn't that be a shame?"

    A childish roll of the eyes and blessed silence was Jack's response.

    

    When they finally touched down, near a small Russian village, snow was softly falling and the ground was broken in crystalline fragments with the rise and fall of the valley-pocked earth.

    "I like this guy's style," Jack murmured, playfully running his fingertips down an already ice-pebbled tree trunk and raising delicate, nonsensical structures on its surface. He moved as if to turn, but the motion was arrested by Pitch's hand on his shoulder. Searching his partner's eyes for any impending mischief, he found only a focused golden intent and relaxed, resettling his feet in the light imprint his landing had left in the snow. "What is it?"

    "We've got to turn together, here. Time moves as you do." Pitch's voice was low and held a gravity that had Jack reluctantly pushing down his initial impulse to disobey. "You could get lost without moving from that spot, Jack." Oh, that wasn't a patronizing tone, at all, was it?

    Was he a little kid, or something? It was as if thinking of the Guardians had summoned their attitude and deposited it into his friendly neighborhood Boogeyman. He shook off Pitch's hand, "Yeah, I got it, alright? No turning or walking around alone, 'hold my hand the whole way,' whatever floats the _S S Paranoia_." Irritation may have clouded his judgment, but not his senses, and the way Pitch drew his hand back in, as if stung, yanked a sense of guilt from somewhere in his gut. "Sorry." A noncommittal shrug of black-clothed shoulders came of that, with Pitch's eyes anything but assuaged, watching him as warily as a mountain lion with its foot in the trap. Jack's hand tightened on his staff for a second; was he supposed to somehow supply the trust from both ends of this equation? He'd thought they were doing pretty well, but apparently that had just been his point of view. "Are you going to freak out every time I screw up?"

    "Pardon?" Like Pitch was some sort of clam, Jack could almost see the shell closing as the Nightmare King's expression twisted.

    "I just mean- look, Pitch, I'm gonna screw up a lot." A shifting of weight from his companion, no longer battle-ready, but still waiting. "That's just a given; I make…" Jack ducked his head, getting the words out quickly, "I make a mess of everything I touch, you know? And I'm a freakin' elemental; I'm gonna say things I don't mean, and- you are, too, and we can't be super-sensitive about it or we won't get anything done." At this point, Pitch had left off scowling, and Jack was met with an unreadable stone visage when he lifted hopeful blue eyes to his partner's face. Pitch broke the gaze with a quiet scoff and shook his head as if clearing it.

    "I don't 'freak out,' Jack; let's just have this done and over with." He shot a sharp glance down at Jack's rising spirits as if to cut them down, but it had no such effect and Jack raised his eyebrows expectantly. "And I will try not to be so 'super-sensitive' when you unthinkingly spew cruel remarks."

    "Ouch."

    "Yes, well," Pitch held out an apathetic hand as if to say, _what can you do?_ "Do you know clockwise from anticlockwise?"

    "Counterclockwise?"

    "Yes, Jack." A roll of golden eyes heavenward did not go unnoticed by Jack, but he forwent revenge to listen as Pitch instructed, "We're going to turn anticlockwise four times, coming around to face this side each time, alright?"

    "Turn to the left, pause at this side and-"

    "No. Don't pause," Pitch corrected, "Four times, and then stop."

    "…Got it." Jack took in a breath in through his nose, "On three, yeah?"

    Pitch gave a curt nod and began the count; on three, they turned as one and Jack had to use all his willpower to keep turning. With just one turn, the snow had melted and dead leaves had jumped from the ground to cling listlessly to dark branches. The sun was uncovered by cloud and Jack gaped, his feet still moving only with the urging memory of Pitch's command not to stop dogging his heels. The second turn and the leaves brightened, life pumped into them, and the grass was green again, and the sun was heavy with heat on his face. Turning past that one was easier to remember. A third turn. The sun was gone and rain pelted the two spirits, flower patches here and there bowing under the onslaught. The last turn brought them, soaked, back into winter, and Pitch grumbled to himself as patches of his robe froze, crackling as he moved.

    "I cannot be _lieve_ you run around with your clothes frozen every day," He brushed fruitlessly at the thin, crackling frost that had permeated his clothing, yet needed shake his hair only once to free it of the same.

    "And I can't believe your hair is so resistant," Jack returned, poking at it half-seriously, "Is it coated with antifreeze?" Pitch swatted the hand away with a spastic motion, looking skyward at the clouds once more as if asking for patience.

    "We're going to walk _straight ahead_ , now; got it, Jack?

    "Is the Tower deep in the-" Jack's eyes rose and met the towering monstrosity before him with a sudden, slack-jawed silence. Metal clock hands and numerals rose out of the ground like a haphazard fence, lining the beaten path directly before them until it met what looked like a rib bone of the earth jutting out of the soil with two enormously heavy wooden doors forming the entryway at its base.

    "Speechless, Jack?" Pitch prompted with a near-malicious glint in his eye, putting a hand between the boy's shoulders to walk him forward. No answer was forthcoming as Jack stumbled along beside the elder spirit, wonder-wide eyes trapped by the looming omnipresence of the Clock Tower. A sneering grin at the continued silence, "Finally."

    As they approached, the dark coloration of the building came into focus and Jack could make out tightly packed letters and numbers spiraling down the building's oddly shaped sides in overlapping currents. The entire thing was on a slant and reminded Jack dreadfully of something, but he wasn't sure what. And oddly, "There's no clock." _Well, the quiet is but a temporal thing,_ Pitch mused wistfully to himself. Jack glanced up at Pitch's pensive face and back at the Clock Tower, still walking mostly by Pitch's power alone, and elaborated with a lightly incredulous laugh, "How is it a clock tower if it hasn't got a clock?"

    "…Well, it _is_ a clock, in a way," Pitch finally responded, "The whole thing is one massive sundial, with the tower at the center." The odd shape of the building clicked and Jack looked down at the shadow they were walking in with delighted awe.

    "Okay, that's cool," He admitted freely, and chattered unanswered questions at Pitch without filter until they came to a stop a ways in front of the doors. Close up, the archway took up nearly Jack's entire field of vision, and looking upwards, the Tower stretched like it could pierce the clouds and continue on forever. He meant to ask if they needed to knock, or intone some ritual chant for permission to enter, or wave their arms like the passing of time itself until Father Time accepted them as his own, but the words were torn from his throat when the sternly plain behemoths opened on their own, just brushing past where they stood. _Duh,_ a less-affected inner voice told Jack condescendingly, _Father_ Time _would know when guests arrive._ For his part, Jack found himself gaping more than he was usually comfortable with, and he cleared his throat, schooling his expression back to a neutral half grin and drawing more comfort than he'd like to admit from Pitch's hand between his shoulders. That hand nudged him forward again and they walked through the stately doors, Jack trying to take as much of them in without being obvious or turning as was possible for him. A corridor stretched before them, as if the interior of the tower were perpendicular to its outer walls, and large rooms and archways splattered the sides in an eclectic mix of styles and ages. He caught glimpses of Victorian bedrooms and strange technology and a blue box and at one point, some sort of opening into a jungle. But despite the temptation, he kept his stride moving forward, Pitch's hand grounding him in the moment with its faint warmth.

    Still, it was hard to just walk past all of those doorways- all of those possibilities.

    Without much warning, they reached the end of the corridor, though it had seemed miles away but a second before. Jack fought the urge to turn around and look behind them, instead finding his eye caught by the raised platform before them. A sturdy, throne-like seat dominated the center of the platform, and the man inside seemed to loom over them both. His eyes closed and his fingers steepled, he appeared uncaring to their presence. His hair was a burnished bronze, the color of old clock gears, and his skin seemed lightly metallic, or iridescent, changing from dark to light rusty brown with strange lilac highlights depending on how the light hit it. The metallic quality made it hard to guess his age, but he emanated knowledge and wore the air of experience like a royal mantle, sitting there so still and thoughtfully on his throne. Tapered fingers came to a point; _the better to meddle with,_ Pitch thought ungraciously. Abruptly the man's legs uncrossed and his eyes flashed open, landing on the two uninvited guests with a calculating interest. It was a different sort of cold than Jack was used to.

    "Hello." His accent was steeped in rolling Punjabi that slipped like cold water over the two spirits (why an Indian spirit set up in Russia, Jack would never know) and Pitch's hand slid from Jack's back like the word had greased it. His expression had darkened and his fingers caged each other into inactivity at his front. "I've been expecting you. So nice to see you again, Jack, Pitch." The grand man nodded to each of them in turn with a practiced smile that looked like it hurt. While trying to pay proper attention to the proceedings, Jack couldn't help but wonder if actual time ran somewhat sideways for the spirit. He'd greeted Jack like he'd met him before.

    "Time," Pitch bit out tersely, giving a nod that Jack copied wordlessly.

    "Ah, I didn't think you'd remember so soon," Time's dolphin smile tilted with interest, "Last I checked the timeline, you were meant to recall our last visit sometime during our negotiations."

    "I'm going to cut right to the point, Time." As he spoke, Pitch's hands clenched briefly into fists before he visibly calmed himself with a surreptitious glance at Jack, "I'm sure you saw us coming, and we're here to negotiate the terms-"

    Time cut in with an apathetically dismissive wave of his hand, "Of my neutrality; yes, I remember." Alright, Jack was fairly _certain_ now that the other myth did not quite experience time in the same way as the rest of them. "But that would be boring. I already know what you'd offer and what you'd withhold." He gave a condescending wink like an automaton running through a preset pattern, "So perhaps, you should let me expedite matters. The first term," One white-gloved finger was held up pointedly, "is that neither of you meddle with time travel again for the rest of your days."

    Huh. Jack thought that'd be a fairly easy term to comply with, but Pitch's jaw set and his hand wrapped about Jack's wrist, "And by that, you mean, don't bugger up your plans."

    "Well, yes," Time's lips parted just slightly, showing the edges of teeth Toothiana would have swooned over in the middle of his unfeeling smile, "That is just it, isn't it, Pitch? You always had such a lovely way of summing things up."

    A movement like an aborted step forward from Pitch, and then, lowly, "And if I don't agree with this term?"

    The smile widened, "Ah, but you will."

    Honestly, the man was treating Pitch like a five-year-old, and Jack found himself bristling at the spirit's behavior. It was one thing to stay quiet during some negotiating, but to just sit there and let Pitch be verbally condescended to like this? "Look, we only came here to talk neutrality terms with you, but if you act this way with everyone I don't think we'll ever have to worry about it." The man was still smiling, as if none of it mattered, and the ice rose angrily through Jack's veins, stopping the flow of blood as his heart stilled to let him speak as he would, "I wonder if that's why you've got this huge place with no one inside. You probably drove everyone off before the end of your first century." Pitch's hand squeezed his wrist warningly, and Jack turned his head to see Pitch face Time with wide eyes,

    "You can't take him seriously. He doesn't know what he's talking about; you see, he's just three hundred or so, and an elemental on top of that," the Nightmare King explained pseudo-calmly, his eyes fixed watchfully on Time's face, as if for an indicator of some coming violence, but the damned smile was as constant as ever.

    "Of course not." Time soothed, walking down the platform towards the duo with natural nonchalance, "You can't punish the youth for their ignorance." For an errant moment, his smile seemed to flicker as he gazed down at the two, but the moment passed, and he took a strangely iron hold of Jack's shoulder, "You can only educate them."

    Pitch's grip on Jack's wrist tightened as his face twisted furiously, but Jack almost couldn't feel it anymore. In fact, everything felt rather distant. Distorted, as if he were experiencing the world through a warped glass shell. His partner was obviously shouting something at Time, but Jack wondered dimly if Time had some sort of spell on him, since clearly, no sound was coming out. _Actually_ , Jack looked from Time to Pitch, who were even then growing slightly blurry around the edges, _I don't think there's any sound at all_.

    Cold eyes entered abruptly into his vision, with a smile traced underneath as Time looked into his eyes. _See you then_ , he mouthed, as his false smile grew until his eyes slit and the world gave a disturbing twist into darkness.

    

    "What's this?" A cold voice wondered aloud with a sneer dug into each syllable. "Some new tactic, Time?" There was an edge to the voice, but something about it was familiar. Jack brought himself up to a seated position, holding his head and squinting against the light.

    "Ow."

    "Of course not," the smooth tones of Father Time replied, mechanical as they had been while doing- whatever it was he had done- to Jack. What had he done to Jack, anyway?

    "What did you _do_ to me?" Jack moaned, rubbing at his eyes with the base of his palms. Removing his hands, he blinked rapidly to clear them. As the Tower came into focus, so did Time and a distinctly unconcerned Pitch Black. Well. That was irritating. Jack got to his feet and brushed off the back of his pants, "Oh and yes, Pitch. I'm just fine. Thanks for asking."

    "How do you know my name?" Pitch demanded, almost turning towards him before he caught himself. He pointed accusingly at Time, instead, "What have you told him? Who is he?"

    Jack looked from the implacable face of Time to Pitch's irascible countenance and felt the gears in his mind grind out an acceptable conclusion. He glared at the metallic man before him, "You sent me back in time."

    "I sent you back in time," Time confirmed, though Jack hadn't been asking a question.

    "What?" Pitch demanded, "What are you two talking about?"

    "Wow, how young are you, here?" Jack wondered impulsively; Pitch's voice, his gestures, hell, his expressions were all off. He was so much more, well, dramatic about his emotions. Past Pitch gave him a heated glare of indomitable hatred.

    And he'd thought his Pitch was angry!

    "Excuse me?" His voice was sullen, and he crossed his arms over his chest in a visible sign of self-restraint. "I'll have you know I'm likely much older than you."

    "Yeah, but I know someone even older," Jack replied, trying not to laugh, "Not to mention a little wiser, and you can't exactly match him." He wondered if his Pitch would remember this conversation later and wring his hands around an imaginary version of Jack's neck. Probably as soon as Pitch realized Jack had been speaking of his future self.

    Past Pitch was gearing up for some angry diatribe, but Time beat him to the bat, with an uninflected, "I'm sure you'd like to know why I've gathered you both here."

    " _I_ came here, on my _own_ ," Past Pitch exclaimed, resentful of even the insinuation Time had anything to do with it. At that, Jack could tell that Pitch came by any control freak tendencies naturally. He commanded himself not to speak that thought aloud, though. Who knew what Pitch would remember when he got back?

    If he got back. Not that he'd hate going through these centuries with Pitch, but… With a sidelong glance at the angry Boogeyman beside him, Jack could admit to himself that this version didn't feel like his Pitch. A Pitch seemed better than no Pitch, though.

    "Why are we here?" Jack asked, adding hastily, "Now, that is?"

    "I have a little task for you to do for me," Time explained, monotonously continuing, "so that I'll keep neutral for you," a nod in Past Pitch's glowering face.

    "I didn't _come_ here for _neutrality_ ," Pitch growled, the unseen light sources flickering, and Time had a moment of almost-nervousness cross his face.

    "Your ally here did," Time retorted tonelessly, and after a moment of thought, amended, "or will."

    "My 'allies,'" Jack could hear the air quotes, "follow _me_ ," Pitch snarled, and turned his head towards the winter sprite beside him, "And if you truly will be my ally, you'll leave here with me now."

    "I'm not totally sure how, or really if this is a good idea," Jack hedged. On the one hand, Father Time was probably the only one able to return him home without getting there the long way. On the other, this was Pitch, and Pitch as he'd never seen him. Angrier, cockier, newer. Like he'd thought before, this one was not _his_ Pitch, but being stranded in the past alone was not preferable to having to figure out this alien Pitch. "But I'll leave with you if you'll tell me how to." Time's eyes shut in resignation, and Jack wondered at the weary set of his shoulders.

    "That timeline, I suppose," Time murmured without feeling, as if commenting on the shape of a cloud.

    Pitch gnashed his teeth, "Did I tell you nothing?"

    "To be fair," Jack mused, "You were awfully tense about approaching Father Time again."

    "Be yourself, Jack," Time continued, not paying attention to the conversation anymore as visions past and to come overcame him.

    "Turn to the left when I do," Past Pitch informed him impatiently, obviously ending that line of conversation. "A quarter turn, and now." Jack scrambled to obey and found himself in an autumnal forest, flaming deciduous trees mixed sparsely with the evergreens. Pitch glanced at him, wariness reflected in the darting nature of his eyes, and directed, "We need to get a bit further from this part of the forest before we make any turns."

     _And you want to look me straight in the eyes as you interrogate me, don't you?_ Jack nodded complacently and followed Past Pitch until the Nightmare King was satisfied with the distance and turned to loom over his possible future ally. For some reason, Jack wasn't expecting it when the looming turned to a sudden strike and Jack found himself pinned to the tree behind him, a hand at his throat.

    "Why should I trust you?" Pitch threw the pointed statement at his face like a call to arms, all the sharper for being pushed out through the abrupt, crazed baring of teeth.

    "My dashing good looks?" The hand on his throat pressed violently harder for a moment and Jack coughed as it eased, sobering, "Jeez, you know I need air to speak even if the whole choking thing won't kill me, right? Welcome back to the freaking _S S Paranoia_ ," he added under his breath. Past Pitch's other hand began dripping shadows, "Okay, _okay_. Because you're going to be my partner in the future, and what good would it do me to betray you when you're just toddling your first steps in world conquest?"

    Pitch didn't look convinced, and the hand still at his throat confirmed Jack's astute analysis. "Tell me something only I could tell you."

    "Um…" Jack wracked his mind for a good Pitch-Fact and felt the fingers at his throat twitch in irritation, "Hey, you're not exactly a well of heart-to-hearts, okay? Give me a second." Pitch's eyes narrowed noticeably, but he didn't resume choking the poor spirit in his grip. Probably because he knew it was true. Did anyone else know about the Fearlings? Likely not, since Jack didn't think the Sandman would convert them willy-nilly if he knew the effect it had on his enemy. He was too soft for that. "You _are_ your Fearlings," Jack began, and had the pleasure of seeing Past Pitch's eyes widen like they had when he'd followed him down in the Nightmares' mutiny, "and if the Sandman converts them, you lose bits of your memory with them."

    Wrong thing to end with, apparently, as Pitch had backed up, eyes flaring, "What? What the hell do you think you're saying? My Fearlings can't…"

    "Oh," Jack realized what was going on just a second after Pitch stepped out of arm's reach, and his unconsciously reaching hand fell short of the other spirit's shoulder, "Pitch, I'm so sorry. I didn't know you didn't know." The sentence was inane and Jack shook himself mentally, "I mean…"

    "Time knows about everything, doesn't he?" Pitch's hands came up to grip his hair, teeth bared, " _He_ told you this _shite_."

    " _You_ told me-"

    "No, no," Pitch backed up another step, one finger out and shaking at him, "No, you've quite made your point. Time knows my weaknesses- even those I don't know about, I see now." The shadows in the clearing were dancing, and demented human-like figures broke out of them, tearing through the intangible darkness and dragging themselves away into the forest as Past Pitch regained control of himself, "Well, then. I guess Father Time has made his thoughts clear on a possible alliance. He'd rather see if time likes being an orphan." Seems like Pitch's wordplay hadn't changed over… time… And now Jack was doing it.

    "Wait- Are you talking about _attacking_ Father Time?" Jack demanded when his mind got past the hurdle of the puns. "You're talking about attacking someone who _literally_ sees all that will be and has been?"

    "Didn't see that you wouldn't work on me, did he?" Pitch retaliated, turning and stalking in the direction his unfamiliar army was taking. Jack took a harder hold of his staff and flew towards Time's clearing, sure of Pitch's target. Hovering over the area, he was wondering if he could turn in the air to make the Tower appear when the shadow figures flooded the clearing, blurring as they covered the area where the Tower would have been. There were… So many more than Jack had thought there were. They must have swarmed out of other shadows throughout the forest, and not just where Pitch had been standing. It was a veritable flood, on par with the doomsday Pitch had wrought before Jamie turned it all on its head. Trees were overwhelmed and felled by the sheer quantities of… Whatever they were. They looked more humanoid than any Fearling Jack had seen yet and more terrible, in that seeming.

    Pitch rose from a clump of them on the edge of the clearing and lifted his arms. Stillness fell over the field like a spell. He hadn't noticed the complete chaos of motion, swirling in odd currents and eddies, until it was gone. Jack twisted around a particularly playful gust of wind with a murmured, "Not now." It wasn't quiet enough, though. Pitch looked up at him, startled for a brief moment before his face hardened again, returning his gaze to the empty clearing. His raised arms dropped like an executioner's axe, and the shadow creatures jumped, falling into the blurred zones and causing little bits of the Tower to flicker in and out of existence. The barrage was ceaseless, and the Tower eventually came into clear, hard cut focus.

    How strong had Pitch been when he was young? Jack twisted his hands around his staff uneasily, _And if he was once_ this _strong, what happens next to make him so wary of Time in the future?_ Unsure of how much he could interfere (he hadn't gotten the debriefing on Time Travel Rules, okay?), Jack hovered over the scene, neither helping nor hindering. He had a feeling that Pitch was about to be humbled, but he was unsure Pitch needed this particular humbling. _I think the Guardians will do enough of that._ Being beaten by a bunch of upstarts several millennia younger than you can do that to a person.

    From Pitch's new height of arrogance— _taking on Time, of all the_ —Jack judged him to be pre-Guardian-butt-whooping. Maybe even pre-Dark Ages from how he was going around seeking out allies. What sort of humbling would he really need at this point? Though, Time should really know best, right? Jack hadn't been around for Pitch's life up to this point, after all.

    The Tower was a writhing mass of shadow by now, seeking out a weak point to make their way in and destroy its master. Pitch stood before the Tower, arms crossed over his chest, sure of his victory.

    This was wrong, wasn't it? This couldn't be how it was meant to play out, right? Jack hovered lower; he couldn't believe Time was going to lose. What would happen to his own timeline? Would it cease to exist? Jack paled as a thought struck him, _Will I just blink out?_ Almost recklessly close now, Jack examined the battlefield. There were no minions of Time appearing to do battle, nor any obvious defenses activated. It seemed like Time was just counting on the impenetrability of his Tower. Yet- what was that?

    A faint pulse of white light traced the small spaces between shadows, only visible due to Jack's closeness to the scene. He glanced back at Past Pitch, trying to discern if he noticed.

    The man was glaring at Jack, now.

    So, either he hadn't noticed or he had a vested interest in ignoring it. Jack was going to put his money on Pitch being oblivious.

    The Tower pulsed again, brighter, and the shadowy mass seemed to deflate. Jack's eyes widened as actual people fell from the writhing layers of shadow, littler shadows scurrying from them to Pitch and vanishing into his skin. Surely, this would be enough to make him back off. After all, Pitch seemed to be losing vast quantities of his creepy, human-shadow hybrid army, and it was only logical to retreat.

    But, that… That didn't look like retreating.

    Pitch had closed his eyes when the littler shadows rejoined him, but they shot open again with a shriek of rage as he registered the information they brought back. A second wave of… shadow men, maybe, streamed around him and up the Tower. Weaker than the first, Jack could only watch in horror as layer by layer, the writhing masses of shadow were exorcised from their human hosts, returning to a progressively more psychotic Pitch Black. The Tower expelled the last of the shadows from the humans, leaving the ground scattered with the bodies, and seemed to be gearing up for a final blast.

    Finally- _finally_ \- Pitch seemed to realize his own folly. His eyes widened as he took in the unconscious (Jack hoped) bodies and his gaze raked up the Tower like he'd seen the fist of a God coming down to crush him. He backed up a step, and one more, and just when he seemed about to run, something settled in his expression and he stopped moving. His eyes fluttered shut and his arms fell limply to his sides.

    Jack was in complete awe. _That… That absolute idiot._ The Tower was apparently ready to accept his surrender, by the increased little pulses as it prepared, and that acceptance seemed contingent on his obliteration.

    Then, it didn't matter if he screwed with Time's plans. Jack dove out of the sky, and crashed bodily into Pitch. The two of them skidded across the ground, Jack's hands under Pitch's head to minimize the damage, with his own tucked close, as the world became a blast of light. The brush on the edge of the clearing slowed them and as they came to a stop, the light faded away until all that was left were sunspots in Jack's vision, painting the forest a dark, pulsing purple and green. Pitch was breathing frantically beneath him. When enough of Jack's vision cleared to understand what he was seeing, Past Pitch had met his gaze and anger rose to the top of Jack's maelstrom of emotions.

    "You stupid idiot!" he exclaimed, pounding a fist against Pitch's shoulder once before he controlled that particular reflex, "What the hell were you thinking?" When no response was forthcoming, Jack continued in a tone that dripped condescension, "Oh, I can guess. 'I'm _Pitch_ , and I'm _too cool_ to accept when I've lost and go regroup. No, I prefer to go down with _every stupid scheme I come up with_. Retreating is for _pansies_.'" Jack glared at Past Pitch, who was staring at him with a wholly unsatisfying expression. No fear, or chagrin, or even regret. Pitch was staring at him like Jack was a sunrise and he'd never seen the light.

    Well, if he actually _enjoyed_ light. _Not a perfect metaphor,_ some part of Jack's mind noted.

    "You," he stated, pointing a finger in Pitch's face, "You will stay alive until you meet me, do you understand? No suicidal last stands. No 'too cool to retreat.' No honorable demises. You lose, you _run_. You seem to be in danger, you get out! I don't want you dead before you're even able to meet me, you total- total shadow brain!"

    And Pitch had the audacity to snort.

    They both seemed surprised by it, though, Jack leaning away and Pitch blinking at himself in bewilderment.

    "Alright, that's enough," Time said, stepping from a clear section of air and snatching up Jack by the hood of his jacket. He held out a hand, and Jack's staff, forgotten in the tumble with Pitch, jerked to his grip. "Good thing you didn't tell him your name or I'd have real trouble on my hands," he advised monotonously. "As for the rest, you have accomplished one of the tasks I could have used you for. You have my neutrality."

    "What?" Jack stopped struggling against the hold, "You're saying you planned this?"

    Time fixed him with a look that was almost weary, "I planned _for_ this eventuality, yes. I've planned for them all, because I will do."

    "Do you just _get off_ being cryptic or-" Time had apparently begun transporting him through his domain again because everything went black.


	6. Time's Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alright, the indents stop here. Putting them in one by one is driving me insane.

"Jack?" Unfamiliar arms surrendered him to someone else's hold, and the voice repeated, closer, "Jack?" The tone changed, became more vicious as it addressed someone else, "What did you do to him? Where- when did you send him?"

"That Timer I put on you is supposed to run out soon," Time said, and this time ( _agh_ ) Jack recognized the voice that answered. "I suppose you _didn't_ remember ahead of schedule after all."

"What Timer?" Pitch shot back, "You can't place a Timer against someone's free will."

"You asked for it," Time explained, sounding nearly like he had enough emotion in him to comprehend something like patience, "When you couldn't find Jack, you asked for it, so you didn't ruin your own chance."

"What does that even mean, 'ruin my own chance?' And who would have trouble finding-" Pitch's voice cut off, and Jack could feel him stop breathing for a moment. He was definitely fully awake and aware now, but Jack was torn between 'waking up' or continuing his false sleep. "I remember." In that case, Jack wasn't going to open his eyes anytime soon. He thought he'd called Pitch an idiot more times in that one conversation in the past than in their entire time knowing one another. "Jack, I'm not mad." Jack's eyes shot open, meeting Pitch's gold gaze above him, and something in his expression communicated his first thought. "I'm also not a mind-reader, I just know when people are awake."

"Like North?" It popped out before he could think about it, but Jack was glad the bout of _understanding_ and _thinking_ hadn't stuck from his visit to a rasher Pitch of the past.

Pitch closed his eyes in silent suffering but sighed, "Yes, Jack. Like North." A slight twitch to his lips became a smirk, though, as he continued, "I can't believe I thought you were insightful back then." He shook his head, "All you really did was elucidate the virtues of 'live to fight another day' in an unsurprisingly in-eloquent fashion."

"Touching," Time cut in, and it was near impossible to figure whether he was being sarcastic since it was hard enough to tell if he even had the ability to be so. "Leave now. You still have my neutrality." At the reminder of Time's continued presence, Pitch set Jack on his feet, removing his hands from Jack's person.

Jack was more interested in understanding what had just happened. "But what was that even about?" he interjected, "Why did you even make any of that happen, Time?"

"I didn't _make_ it happen," Time told him with the air of recitation, "I _prepared_ for it happening."

"And lo, Time comes forth with the same excuse he tried before," Jack complained, ready and willing to begin a tirade on the cryptic nature of Time's 'explanations' when Pitch caught Jack's shoulder in a tight grip.

"Good day, Time. Thank you for your neutrality," he said, sounding nearly civil, and then made a sharp quarter turn to the left, forcing Jack with him. The Tower faded away and Pitch walked away from the clearing, whistling for the Nightmare that was waiting in the forest and dragging Jack along. Jack crossed his arms over his chest at the blatant manhandling, but the worst was yet to come as Pitch bodily lifted the winter sprite (Jack contemplated switching from snowflake weight to glacier, but ultimately decided not to flatten the Boogeyman) and dropped him onto the Nightmare. In the aftermath of that particular trauma, Jack scrambled into a seated position, shoving his staff through the straps on his legs as Pitch mounted behind him.

"We need to go back," he insisted, but Pitch just gripped the Nightmare's mane and took off.

"Look," the Nightmare looped around and Pitch had to pause to fight down the nausea before he continued, "A young man I met once told me something that stuck with me even after I…" He looked away and suddenly Jack was much more interested in what Pitch had to say than Father Time. Pitch cleared his throat, "Well, that bit isn't important. That man told me that sometimes, you have to run, when you're losing. And trust me," Pitch searched out Jack's eyes this time, and there was no levity in his gaze, "any moment spent in Time's presence is one spent losing. We achieved the objective here. We don't need to worry about Father Time for now. Focus on the Guardians."

Wet clouds whipped past them as the Nightmare gained speed and Jack focused on Pitch's little speech. He was leaving out something, obviously, but was it worth ruining this almost creepily tender moment for?

"What's a Timer?" Jack blurted. Oh, apparently, it was. Jack found it a great glowing wonder when his mouth bothered to consult his brain at all, so ignoring its advice was par for the course. Still, he hadn't thought he was _that_ insensitive.

"I can see your propensity for irritation hasn't diminished with that glimpse of my old power," Pitch leaned forward, pressing closer with a thoughtful hum, "Though, I might've been disappointed if it had been."

Jack kept himself from gaping with tremendous force of effort, "I'm sure you know that this's really weird behavior for you, right?"

"That'd be the Timer running out," Pitch explained, the hand that had left the Nightmare's mane resting on Jack's stomach instead, "There's around two thousand years between your little excursion and today, and now I can remember trying to find you for a good half of those. Excuse me for feeling a tad triumphant." _And maybe a little shell-shocked,_ Pitch finished silently. The chances that he'd just stumbled onto a prize like this... Especially after all that wasted effort... Well, a part of him couldn't believe it. He had to keep Jack in his sight to keep himself from writing it off as a particularly detailed delusion.

"What," Jack tried again, "is a Timer?" Maybe this time, he'd get an answer, rather than super special bonding time. He was fine with super special bonding time so far, but it had a time and a place, and that was _after_ Jack found out what Jack needed to find out.

"It's something that… suppresses the memories of a temporally altered event until they are once again relevant."

"Alright." Now he was getting some answers. The frost spirit leaned back into Pitch, consciously releasing the tension that had accumulated since they first landed in front of the Tower and flexing his feet. "So you had Time sort of, like, erase me from your memory? Why would you do that?"

He could feel Pitch take a deep breath and slowly let it out, struggling with truth for a moment, "I will tell you, but don't interrupt." Jack nodded, and Pitch said, "Back then, I was looking for allies, and I was _hoping_ for someone to trust. I was scared out of my wits because it'd been the first time I'd ever gotten stuck on one planet. I used to raze star systems," his voice dropped, low and hungry, "destroy whole sections of the galaxy with pure, smothering fear." This was the first Jack had heard about any of this. He wanted to ask where Pitch came from and what the hell he'd done to _raze star systems,_ but if he interrupted, he might not get _any_ of the story. Pitch's tone returned to his normal, didactic range, "But something about Earth was apparently too much. Maybe it was the sheer quantity of other spirits, or the particular orbit it took- I just don't know what happened. For the first time since I was created, I was planet bound, and I was terrified. Each stroke of fear I used to push forward anger, and determination, and when I made my big mistake with Father Time, I realized I didn't _want_ an ally who knew this planet, I _needed_ one, and I needed it to be you. If I'd just listened to you, I wouldn't have lost all my Nightmare Men, nor been stripped of the power to overwhelm others with shadows as a condition of surrender- after Time returned you to when you came from, of course. I could only add to my expendable ranks if someone _allowed_ themselves to be overtaken by fear. Which," Pitch remarked thoughtfully, "was rather more difficult to manipulate than one would think." He shook his head, "I was crippled, and humbled, and terrified, and all my confusion seemed to clear up if I just focused on finding you. It was logical to find the one man who had not only saved me, but evidently was trusted by my future self with one of my deepest weaknesses.

"I was grasping at straws really. It was practically a thousand year long panic attack. After the Guardians defeated me, I truly became desperate. You had to be somewhere, in some time. And I had to have you." Jack shifted uneasily; it looked like Pitch's possessiveness was going to receive an upgrade. "But no matter where I searched, no matter whom I asked or threatened or practically destroyed, no one had heard of a white-haired frost spirit with a strange blue top and a shepherd's staff. It became clear to me that I'd have to humble myself once more. I returned to the Tower." Jack gasped pseudo-dramatically, unable to help himself and Pitch's tone turned wry, "Oh, hush you.

"I asked him where you were, what your name was, but I was so out of sorts I didn't ask _how_ to find you." A grind of teeth before Pitch continued, "He told me the truth; you had no name and you were nowhere. After all, you didn't exist _yet_ , but he didn't bother explaining _that_ particular nuance. The idea that I'd been wasting all this effort for a figment was the tipping point, and I begged him for mercy. I asked him to remove the illusion he'd planted from my mind and let me stop wondering and wishing. He told me first, that he didn't want to remove hope from me, and I told him the hope was worse. Finally, he acquiesced, and explained to me what a Timer did.

"I should've known, then, that you were real, but I was well and truly defeated and I accepted the Timer, anyway." Pitch shrugged against Jack's back, "I'm not sure I can explain all my reasoning for that, but perhaps you can draw your own conclusions. It-" he hesitated, before plowing on with a tangible nervousness, "When the Timer went off, I realized how… lucky I'd been to get you on my side without that foreknowledge." Jack risked a glance back, and Pitch's cheeks were darker than he'd seen them yet. "And I'll never say any of this again, so don't get used to it," he grumbled in conclusion.

Pitch was guiding the Nightmare mostly mentally, so Jack felt safe enough grasping Pitch's forearms and giving them a light squeeze. He couldn't physically lean any further into the pseudo-embrace, so he had to settle for looking up at Pitch with a glacier-sized grin, "Aw, the feeling's mutual, honey-bunch." Somehow, Jack didn't get thrown off the Nightmare, and despite a twitch of one hairless brow, they made the ride home in silence. Ignoring the unending smile being shoved pointedly in his direction, Pitch decided he'd mention the other effect of the Timer going off when they weren't flying over enemy territories.

North was working hard on the randomization of his snowflakes. It appeared that he could either have them be produced identically, or with lopsided crystallization, wherein each arm of the snowflake was a different design than the other five. This was surprisingly frustrating, as the machine alternated between the two configurations with astonishing stubbornness. He shouted in helplessness, sounding like a yeti, and pushed the uncooperative machine to the side. "You remind me of Jack," he told it sternly, "but no failing will be happening _this_ time."

It was nearly a week until Christmas, and only a few months since Jack had gone turncoat on them, but it already felt like an eternity. He still couldn't entirely believe it. Pitch Black and Jack Frost, working together? Acting as family? Pitch was likely manipulating Jack, pulling all the strings and saying all the right things to seem like he was capable of caring. North knew Pitch was not. Other than power, the only thing he'd ever gotten into a fuss about was that…

North's eyes widened, _That winter sprite he was looking for when most of the Guardians were chosen._ How had he not connected this by now? They'd kept tabs on Pitch after his utter defeat at the end of the Dark Ages in the 16th century and all he seemed to do when he emerged was ask after some frost spirit with a shepherd's staff. Yet, Jack had not been created as of yet, and North recalled that the search had abruptly ended after five centuries or so and been put mysteriously from his mind. Seven centuries following, Jack Frost had come into being.

The door to his private workshop burst open as Toothiana flew in, and Bunnymund was seconds behind her, crashing into the fairy and sending them both sprawling to the floor. As North turned to see the disaster, Sanderson made himself known with a golden exclamation point above his head as he stepped off a cloud of gyrating sand into North's workshop window. They all began to talk, and sign, at once, and North raised his big hands in a halting gesture, "I know. I remember, too."

"But how is this possible?" Tooth asked, extricating herself from Bunnymund, "None of us connected the dots. I still knew about it, somewhere in the back of my head, but it never seemed important."

"At least now we know why Pitch was practically gunning for him from the get go," Bunnymund put in, "He musta had some sorta prophecy or vision or somesuch so he knew he could turn Jack."

Sanderson let loose a volley of symbols that ended on an alarm clock embedded in a head, _This has to do with Father Time and his Timers._

Tooth and Bunnymund wouldn't recognize those symbols, as they'd never been too curious about spirits outside the Guardians, but North had spent many a long conversation talking with their most ancient member about the things he'd seen and done. "Father Time?" He repeated in amazement, "You are saying he is responsible for this?"

Sanderson nodded rapidly, a veritable explosion going off over his head as the symbols flashed more and more quickly, _I am certain a Timer is the reason for our previous states. We must go to Father Time and request an explanation. Any meddling Pitch has done in his own time stream would have to have been with Time's permission, but Time isn't always on our side, and if Pitch was willing to pay the price…_

"Is very disturbing prospect," North agreed with the face Sandy was making at the very idea.

"Pitch is messing with time, now?" Bunnymund pulled at an ear irritably, "Anything to get revenge, eh?"

"Well, whatever he did," Toothiana began slowly, "It certainly hasn't helped him now. In fact, he's lost every encounter with us he's had. I'm not sure it was _Pitch_ that went into his own past." The other Guardians regarded her in silence.

Eventually: "Jack," Bunnymund stated, putting to words the unspoken accusation sitting uncomfortably in the air.

"What did he do, I wonder?" North mused aloud, "Especially to have such an effect on our resident Boogeyman?"

_Pitch tangled with Time once before this,_ Sanderson put in, _Before any of you were Guardians and when he was still new to Earth. Everyone was surprised he came out alive, if weakened._

The Guardians exchanged a significant glance.

"Is possible, then, that Time wanted Pitch to team up with Jack," North postulated, stroking his beard.

"Yeah, and if we're all rememb'rin' now," Bunnymund groused, "The buggers are likely out and about."

"Yes," North agreed grimly, "And their bond is maybe stronger for it."

"Wait," Jack said slowly as they arrived at the lair to gather what they needed for a visit to Mother Nature, "What was that stuff with the shadowy men? …Nightmare Men, you said?" Pitch winced and prepared to defend himself. This argument looked to be a long one.

Jamie finished his latest crayon masterpiece and pondered whether to put it on the wall. With the strangely light snow this December, he'd been thinking a lot about Jack Frost, and the drawing reflected that. It was just a collection of doodles, really, but they all had to do with snow and ice. He'd needed to think. There was still a part of him that wanted to believe Jack was a good guy. That sleigh ride had been fun and he did like snow days. Plus, Jack seemed way too, well, positive to be a bad guy.

But… He _was_ friends with Pitch. No matter how much fun Jack brought or how many smiles he wore, that fact remained. So there had to be something in Jack that he was missing, for the spirit to be so completely on Pitch's side. That comment he'd made about his grandma and the ice had seemed to hurt Jack, but he hadn't fought the barb. Jamie still remembered how Jack's eyes had shuttered, hands curling defensively around his staff. _There is good and bad in everything,_ Jamie reminded himself, _and just cause Jack seemed good didn't mean he's always that way._ Now, Jamie didn't quite _blame_ Jack for his grandmother's death, but it was something to remember. While the other Guardians' duties involved dreams and presents and surprises, Jack was in control of ice and snow, a literal force of nature, and nature was more survival of the fittest than warm fuzzies and cooperation. Pitch, similarly, had some connection to fear and shadow. It was hard enough to see Jack keeping himself from _accidentally_ hurting anyone; it was harder still to visualize Pitch's powers being used for anything remotely good. In that light, it was easier to see how Pitch and Jack had been drawn together. Jamie crumpled up the doodle sheet, _There's more bad than good in powers focused on the cold and dark._ With a flick of his wrist, the paper fell into the wastebasket, _but I can't stop hoping the good comes out._

Pitch was getting the silent treatment. In spite of himself, he was grudgingly impressed Jack was even capable of it. For their trip to Mother Nature, there were different branch bouquets to gather and assemble. Jack had looked up descriptions of the trees, brought back fallen branches, and begun to assemble them with Pitch in complete silence. Though, Pitch had known something like this was coming; Jack had become steadily more indignant as Pitch described his shadows' ability to possess humans and other sentient beings so as to create Nightmare Men. He'd assured Jack the men would still live if the shadows left them and that Time had locked the power away somehow after Jack's intervention with his past. At that point, Jack seemed to be reluctantly calming down, but then he had asked if Pitch would use the power if he ever got it back. An emphatic "of course" had clearly been the wrong answer. He'd tried to explain the tactical advantage of it, but Jack was too horrified to care.

"You'd just trap them in their heads all alone for some strategy?" he'd exclaimed at one point. Pitch had lost his temper and put the final nail in the coffin himself when he snapped that it was a little late to be growing a conscience after he turned his back on the _Guardians of Childhood_ and teamed up with the goddamn boogeyman. Not impressed, Jack had imposed the silent treatment Pitch even now suffered through. Pitch had hoped Jack would crack on his own. Being such an ebullient personality, Pitch couldn't see the spirit keeping his mouth shut for more than five minutes.

Several hours had passed.

Our dear Nightmare King was beginning to see that he may have to man up and offer an… An apology.

This was _not_ his preferred chain of events. Jack was right beside him, bundling several elm sticks together and sitting on Pitch's desk. Letting his own holly bundle drop, Pitch cleared his throat, "Jack?" The winter sprite put down his bundle and turned to him, arms crossed over his chest and eyebrows a lofty height above his eyes. "I'm…" No, he couldn't say that. "I apologize."

Jack narrowed his eyes for a second, searching for something and seeming to find it, as he grinned, "Sorry, I don't think I could have just heard the great boogeyman _apologize,_ right? Could you repeat that? A shouting volume should work."

Pitch scowled, "No." He'd already said it once, and now Jack was just taking the mickey out of him.

"I still think you shouldn't possess people," Jack put in, as if Pitch would mistake his forgiveness for acceptance.

"Yes, well, that's a non-starter right there, isn't it?" Pitch reminded him, "I can't."

Flopping onto his back dramatically, Jack unintentionally sent a finished bundle to the floor with his theatrics, "Fine." A deep sigh that was belied by an icicle grin, "Truce."

In reluctant agreement, Pitch smiled nastily, still a little bitter over the forced apology, and returned his attention to the sticks before him. The maple bundle was the one fallen and a group of Fearlings relayed it back up to the desk. Jack wasted no time in scooping the top Fearling in both hands and laying it gently over his stomach, one bare foot pressed to the side of Pitch's arm. This particular Fearling looked like an enormous slug mixed with a lizard, but Jack began petting the ugly amalgamation draped over him anyway and asked, "What's the difference between the shadows and the Fearlings, anyway?"

"There isn't one, anymore," Pitch hedged, "but I used to use the name 'Fearlings' for a technique akin to the Nightmare Men." Ignoring the glare Jack leveled at the eyes of the Fearling on his belly, Pitch reached for an unbundled stack of oak sticks, "I stopped that one on my own, Jack. I don't entirely remember why," his tone was utter nonchalance, so he was _clearly_ lying about that bit, "but it doesn't matter. That time is over with."

Jack eyed the Fearling suspiciously, counting on Pitch actually paying attention to any visual input it may be providing, but resumed his petting without comment. Not like he hadn't already known Pitch wasn't exactly a good guy. Moreover, he didn't want to start another row when the last had just been resolved. Like Pitch said, that time was over with, and if it seemed a little naïve to some part of Jack to take Pitch at his word, he ignored it. Better luck next time, Doubt. Aforementioned boogeyman was putting together the last bundle of sticks that would let them enter Mother Nature's Glen. They'd have to get there at sunrise in that part of the world because, like the Tower, the Glen required special treatment to reveal itself. Bloody high maintenance, if you asked Pitch. Entrance to _his_ lair just required one to blindly jump down a hole in the woods. Now, though, was mid-morning where the Glen rested, so there was nothing that needed to be done for the next few hours.

"Alright," Jack decided, sitting up and letting the Fearling slide to his lap, "We've filled our arguing quota for the time being. Now we have to do something friendlier together."

Despite himself, Pitch found a smirk tugging at his lips, "And how, exactly, do you propose we go about that?"

"Well," Jack shrugged and put the Fearling to the side, "Maybe some normal family stuff. Play a game. Read a book. Talk about our days… Um…" A swirl of wind and he was on his feet, "I guess we had the same couple days, though. Except the time travel issue."

The smirk was definitely full grown, now, no denying it, "And I recall you were not altogether fond of our last time spent reading together."

Jack laughed, "Yeah, I didn't think that one through."

"I'm also not playing a _game_ with you," Pitch warned, but the tone was soft and teasing as flurrying snow. Jack waved this off. Leaning back in his chair, Pitch watched Jack pace the room in thought, leaping lightly onto war machines and bookshelves as they came up in his path. An idea slithered into his head and Jack jumped to Pitch's desk, landing as quietly as a cat and crouching to eye level.

There was a challenging glint to his eye, "Let's fight."

"Excuse me?"

Jack's eyes rolled heavenward in supplication, "Oh, for the love of life. Here." And he smacked Pitch in the face with a snowball. The clear-white crystals dripped down his skin with a slow, wet slide and when Pitch cleared his eyes of the evil stuff, Jack was gone and his Fearlings present had matching frozen masks to block their views, Jack's cackling echoing off into the distance. Pitch cracked his neck with an involuntary grin, _You're not the only one who can vanish, Jack,_ and dissolved into the shadows. His form followed the sound of Jack chuckling to himself, sliding smoothly and quickly across the ceiling, walls, and tunnel edges as a passing shadow.

"Jack," he sang out quietly, "There's nowhere to run I can't find you." He stepped out of the shadows in corporeal form, noting that Jack had led him to the craggy entry hall the Nightmares had once dragged them to. A snowball exploded across the back of his neck, pinpricks of cold going slushy, and Jack's laughter rang out, echoing through the chamber. Pitch could see why Jack had chosen the battlefield. Irregular rock formations filled the room that a flying opponent could easily take advantage of, but there was also a multitude of shadowy corners and niches. A bit of Pitch's shadow, that he usually kept close, slipped away and skittered off into the darkness. Finding his mark, Pitch's lips split over a toothy grin that vanished into shadow.

Jack couldn't stop laughing. Pitch's face had run the full gamut of emotions in the past few minutes. Wild eyes narrowed and then popped out of his head, lips gaping opening and then narrowing into a thin line or twitching like they wanted to smile, eyebrows flying up and down and together- it was just too much. As another peal of laughter escaped him, the frost spirit kept moving about the edges of large, brown-grey stalactites. He wasn't worried about Pitch finding his exact location that way. The whole room acted as his back up, scattering the sound and confusing the source. Another glance at Pitch's face revealed something triumphant before it melted into the dark. Jack whipped around another stalactite, eyes darting for possible Fearlings, laughter quieting to irrepressible chuckles, burbling out and away in a stream that trailed him like a tail. He'd _missed_ this. They'd had one or two mock battles since then, but the moments he felt most alive were when he was with children, or facing a challenge. This was the first time he felt that Pitch was taking Jack's own challenge seriously.

"Boo!" Pitch's face popped out of the shadowed niche Jack had been hiding in and the winter spirit toppled a few feet lower in surprise. Alright, maybe not _enemy-level-serious,_ but still. The Boogeyman opened his offense with a stream of well-defined Fearlings, who clung to Jack and milled over his clothes in ticklish manner. The Boogeyman vanished into the ether while his tiny counterparts marched determinedly in their mission as a distraction.

Well, Pitch was taking it almost seriously, anyway.

Two could play at that game, though, and Jack snatched one of the slower Fearlings from his arm. A swirl of wind against the creature's belly brought a yelp of surprise from the far corner of the room. Suddenly, Pitch was upon him, throwing waves of Nightmares and waving around some Nightmare sand shaped suspiciously like a club. Jack dodged and weaved, freezing Nightmares and throwing hail pellets Pitch's direction.

The Fearlings abandoned their post at a pause in the battle, and the one in Jack's free hand squirmed wildly as Pitch declared, "No more tickling."

"I thought this was a free for all," Jack smirked, his other hand still aiming his staff in Pitch's direction and Pitch's club unwavering in its compass-like pointing to Jack.

"Can we just mutually agree on this and move on?" Pitch demanded.

Jack let the last Fearling slither away. "Sure."

Pitch was sure he only blinked, but in the next moment, he gained another slush facial, and Jack moved in for the kill. The world narrowed to a relentless exchange of blows. Nightmare sand and ice clashed and froze in twisted, spiking curves. The light flickered in and out of being and the temperature plummeted as the fight wore on. One of them would trip up eventually; it was only a matter of time.

Jack sensed the Fearlings coming up behind to slaughter his footing, though, and leaped up, hooking his staff around Pitch's waist as he landed behind him and bodily throwing him to the ground. The Boogeyman made as if to scramble to his feet, but Jack's staff nudged the underside of his chin and he settled back.

"Shouldn't have given up that tickling distraction," Jack mocked cheerily, "you might've scraped a victory."

Pitch rolled his eyes, "I thought you were under the impression that having fun made winners of us all."

"Pitch," Jack pulled his shepherd's crook close to his chest, scandalized, "Did you just espouse a belief that _doesn't_ lead to mass human suffering and trauma?"

"Oh, _espouse_ ; dictionary word of the week, Jack? And don't get used to it," Pitch groused, accepting the hand Jack extended to help him back up to his feet, "Though I have resigned myself to peeling my sore, battered body off the ground far more than I am comfortable with when in your company, I am less than pleased with the experience."

"But you admit you had fun," Jack pressed.

"I admit nothing," Pitch returned haughtily, patting down his robes like the dust was somehow visible. A pause, "You should have seen your face when I popped out right in front of you, though."

"Probably gave you smirk material for weeks," Jack admitted, "but no bragging rights, since victory is mine."

"Oh, snookums," Pitch crooned in a sickly sweet tone as they left the room, "What's mine is yours and all that."

Jack paused, trying to find the insult.

Maniacal laughter from the Nightmare King beside him was not helping.


End file.
